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A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES UNDER 
THE CONSTITUTION. 5 vols., 8vo. Cloth. 
$11.25. 

THOMAS JEFFERSON. 12mo. Cloth. $1.00. 

HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 8vo. Cloth. $2.00. 



DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, 

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HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 



7 

JAMES SCHOULER. 



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NEW YORK: 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY. 

1896. 



ST-] 



Copyright, 1896, 
By Dodd, Mead and Compant. 



University Press : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



TO THE 
AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, 

AT WHOSE ANNUAL MEETINGS MANY OF THESE ESSAYS HAVE BEEN 
KEAD, AND FROM WHOSE MEMBERS, COLLECTIVELY AND AS 
INDIVIDUALS, I HAVE RECEIVED THE CHIEF LITER- 
ARY ENCOURAGEMENT OF MATURE LIFE, 

3ri)ts Folutne 

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED BY 

THE AUTHOR. 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 



With the exception of two Review articles, which 
it was thought best to omit,^ this volume contains all 
of Professor Schouler's Historical Miscellanies which 
have hitherto been read or printed by him ; and in 
order to complete the range of discussion pursued by 
the general essays contained herein, he has added 
two — " Historical Monographs " and " Historical 
Style " — which are published in this book for the 
first time. Our author's lecture courses, and the 
many professional papers from his pen which have 
appeared in the legal periodicals, are of course 
omitted. 

The Biography will be found a unique and impor- 
tant feature of the present volume, and the publishers 
trust it may prove interesting and helpful to the gen- 
eral reader. The narrative is prepared from fresh 
and original materials supplied by the author himself, 
and its truthfulness may be relied upon. 

1 "Our Diplomacy during the Rebellion," North American Review, 
April, 1866; "The Hawaiian Conquest," The Forum, February, 1894. 



CONTENTS. 



I. HISTORICAL BRIEFS: Page 

Francis Parkman 1 

Historical Grouping 16 

Spirit of Research 22 

Historical Industries 34 

Historical Monographs 48 

Historical Testimony 60 

Historical Style . 71 

Lafayette's Tour in 1824 85 

Monroe and the Rhea Letter 97 

President Polk's Diary 121 

President Polk's Administration .... 139 

Reform in Presidential Elections .... 160 

IL BIOGRAPHY: 

1 169 

II 177 

III. (1839-1S46) 188 

IV. (1847-1855) 206 

V. (1855-1859) 223 

VI. (1860-1866) 242 

VIL (1866-1872) 261 

VIII. (1873-1896) . 281 



HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 

The illustrious scholar and liistorian, whose death 
we have deplored so recently, found physical draw- 
backs to his work to hinder and discourage. But all 
the greater is his meed of success because he sur- 
mounted them. His life was, on the whole, a happy 
one, and rounded out in rare conformity to its ap- 
pointed task ; he passed the Psalmist's full limit of 
jrears, as few of our English-speaking historians have 
done ; and, however slow or painful might have been 
his progress, he completed in his riper years the great 
enterprise which he had projected in early life. Like 
one of those fair roses which in hours of recreation 
he so fondly cultivated, his literary reputation has 
lingered in full blossom, dispersing its delicate fra- 
grance and beauty among all beholders. 

Circumscription in the activities of the present life, 
when once felt to be inevitable, will turn the studious 
mind to closer communion with the past ; and a last- 
ing solace, no less than a source of usefulness, may 
be found in identifying one's self with those earlier 
generations of mankind, among whom he moves 
superior, with his own little particle of Divine om- 

Reprinted from "Harvard Graduates' Magazine," March, 1894. 
1 



2 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

niscience, cognizant of the consequences where they 
had groped, blindly, and feeling for them accordingly 
a human sympathy somewhat allied to compassion. 
Two eminent historians at least ^ have Massachusetts 
and our own Harvard University sent forth to the 
world, especially consecrated thus to their vocation, 
— William Hickling Prescott and Francis Parkman ; 
and it must surely prove strange if the individual 
career of the earlier of these studious invalids did 
not largely influence the later. Both came of native 
New England stock, in which culture and taste were 
hereditary; both were true-hearted gentlemen by 
temperament and training ; both had strong social 
and family roots in proud, intellectual Boston, so 
that seclusion simply clarified their acquaintance. 
Each inherited a fortune sufficient to relieve liim 
from pecuniary anxiety. The literary tasks of the 
two were closely related in sul)ject and method of 
development ; Mr. Prescott's theme comprising Span- 
ish dominion in the New World, Mr. Parkman's the 
later dominion of France ; and each directing his re- 
search to distant European documents, wliile out of 
pictorial incidents which involved the native races he 
constructed narratives which, grouped together, might 
vividly illustrate a broad historical period, without 
assuming the pronounced garb of consecutive histoiy. 
Their struggles against partial blindness and disability 
from the outset were singularly alike, and to some 
extent their experience in the assistance of an amanu- 
ensis. Some new tale of patience and iron perse- 
verance under literary obstacles may possibly await 
us from Mr. Parkman's surviving family. But long 
ago he must have been deeply impressed in his own 

1 Unless tradition errs, a third might fittingly be named, in Richard 
Hildreth. 



FRANCIS PAEKMAN. 3 

person with the facts of Mr. Prescott's beautiful life, 
which, as written by the felicitous pen of George 
Ticknor, is certainly the most stimulating biography 
for studious aspirants that ever was written. Mr. 
Prescott's fame was at its meridian when Mr. Park- 
man's star first dawned, and his most popular work, 
" The Conquest of Mexico," — a dramatic episode and 
a tragedy, as is also the " Conspiracy of Pontiac," — 
came out while Boston's younger delineator was at 
college. Often, indeed, must this junior explorer of 
colonial history have felt in his own heart, whether 
prompted or unprompted, as he pursued his studious 
round, what Mr. Prescott has so fittingly recorded: 
" On the whole there is no happiness so great as that 
of a permanent and lively interest in some intellect- 
ual labor. No other enjoyment can compensate or 
approach to the steady satisfaction and constantly in- 
creasing interest of active literary labor, the subject 
of meditation when I am out of my study, of diligent 
and stimulating activity within; to say nothing of 
the comfortable consciousness of directing my powers 
in some channel worthy of them, and of contributing 
something to the stock of useful knowledge in the 
world." 

Francis Parkman was born in Boston, September 
16, 1823. He came of a line of honorable Massachu- 
setts ancestors, among whom were college graduates 
and Congregational clergymen -with literary acquire- 
ments. From his grandfather, a wealthy and prosper- 
ous Boston merchant, he seems to have inherited that 
decided taste for floriculture which became a marked 
accomplishment ; fondness for books and study being, 
in a broader sense, a familj^ trait. His father, whose 
Christian name he bore, had been a favorite pupil 
and admirer of Dr. Channing, whose liberal tenets 



4 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

he preached at the New North Church in Boston, of 
which he was pastor for many years. His uncle, 
George Parkman, was a physician. Both father and 
uncle gave freely from their ample means to Harvard 
University; the one to aid the Divinity and the other 
the Medical School ; and the Parkman professorship 
of pulpit eloquence and pastoral care commemorated 
in our college catalogue the family surname years 
before a son's literary fame promised it an academic 
lustre far greater than beneficence alone could bestow. 
An inbred taste for letters combined from early 
boyhood with a love of woodland adventure to direct 
the youth's destiny. Frail when a child, Francis was 
sent to the country home of a maternal relative, near 
the Middlesex Fells, where he remained for several 
years. That magnificent forest tract, still in its 
primitive wildness, gave him a first sympathetic ac- 
quaintance with out-of-doors life, which he never lost. 
Returning home, when turned of twelve, he pursued 
his classical studies at a private school in Boston, 
and entered Harvard College in 1840, just seventeen 
years of age. Here once more the fondness for forest 
life was manifested ; he spent one college vacation in 
camping and canoeing on the Magalloway River, in 
northern Maine, to this day a favorite haunt of the 
sportsman ; and in the course of another, he explored 
the calm waters of Lakes George and Charaplain, a 
region redolent with traditions of the old French and 
Indian War. Sickness once more diverting him from 
his regular studies, he was sent on a voyage to Europe, 
from which he returned in season to graduate with 
his class in 1844. In the course of his foreign tour 
he visited Rome, and, lodging in a monastery of the 
Passionist Fathers, he learned something by observa- 
tion, for the first time, of those missionary agencies 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 5 

which the Roman Catholic Church had employed in 
former centuries with so much effect for reclaiming 
the red tribes of our great interior wilderness. 

By this time, and indeed as early as his sophomore 
year at college, and before passing out of his teens, 
young Parkman had formed the distinct design of 
writing a history of the French and Indian War ; and 
what to others might have seemed the casual recrea- 
tion of youth bore immediately, from his own serious 
point of view, upon a precocious purpose. Heeding 
the wishes of his elders, he gave some two years after 
graduation to the dry study of the law ; but destiny 
proved paramount, and in the summer of 1846 he was 
seen starting for the far West, with a young kinsman 
and college-mate for a companion, ostensibly seeking 
personal adventure, but in reality resolved upon pre- 
paring himself by personal observation for the great 
literaiy task of life. A printed volume, which gath- 
ered in the course of three years a series of sketches 
he had meantime contributed to the " Knickerbocker 
Magazine," descriptive of these wild experiences, was 
his first exploit in authorship ; and under the style of 
the " Oregon Trail," these sketches with their original 
title first modified, and then restored, made up a book 
still prominent in our literature. Here the narrator 
himself is traveller and pioneer, supplying materials 
of contemporaneous description for historians of a 
later day to draw upon. An acute comprehension of 
strange scenery and strange people remote from con- 
ventional society, faithfulness to facts, and the power 
of delineating with humor and picturesque effect 
whatever may be best worth describing, are evinced 
in this earliest effort ; and the impressiveness of the 
volume is greatly enhanced by the preface which the 
author inserted in a later edition, recalling vividly 



6 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

from the retrospect of another quarter of a century 
the wild scenes and lonely cavalcade which were 
already of the remote past, never in that once remote 
and lonely Pike's Peak region to be beheld again. 
It was in 1846 that the INIexican War was declared, 
whose first announcement reached our young explor- 
ers while they were far out on the plains, though in 
season to give them that summer a sight of Doniphan's 
military expedition, as well as of those more peaceful 
emigrant bands whose winding way was toward Ore- 
gon, California, and the Salt Lake wilderness, igno- 
rant of gold and bent only upon agriculture. Curious 
observers only of such momentous caravans, the two 
Boston youths indulged their bent by camping among 
the Sioux Indians, and living upon rough and precari- 
ous Indian fare, listening to Indian legends, studying 
Indian traits and customs, and hunting the buffalo 
with their roving companions. The young historian 
gained the information he sought ; but he paid dearly 
for his rash opportunit}^ for he was confirmed in 
invalid habits for the rest of his life. 

" The Oregon Trail " is autobiographical, and so 
too are occasional passages in the prefaces which Mr. 
Parkman has written for his later successful works, 
more strictly historical. Of the probable influence 
upon his labors of the renowned Prescott, his older 
fellow-sufferer and fellow-citizen, we have spoken. 
To Washington Irving's "Astoria," Mr. Parkman's 
" Oregon Trail " makes familiar reference ; and very 
likely to recitals of Indian hardships borne by his 
New England ancestors were added, by the time he 
became a college student, the fascinating delight of 
Cooper's "Leather Stocking Tales," whose romance 
of the French and Indian period has not yet lost its 
attractive hold upon American youth. Fortified 



FRANCIS PARKMAK 7 

further by his own practical contact with primitive 
life, whose recital had marked his first launch in 
literature, he buckled down to the graver task of 
historian and portrayer of the past. But the star of 
strength and of the unconquerable will he had now 
full need to invoke. From the day he returned from 
the far West to tlie day of his death he was never 
again entirely well. Chief among the obstacles to 
retard his progress was the condition of his sight; 
and for about three years the light of day was insup- 
portable, and every attempt to read or write com- 
pletely debarred. Indeed, as Mr. Parkman has 
recorded, there were two periods preceding 1865, 
each lasting several years, during which such labors 
"would have been merely suicidal," and his health 
forbade reading or writing for much over five minutes 
at a time, and often forbade it altogether. Onl}- by 
the most rigid perseverance and economy of strength 
could such disheartening obstacles be overcome. In 
sifting materials, and in composition, he had to rely 
largely, like Mr. Prescott, upon memory and the 
sense of hearing. His amanuensis would repeatedly 
read the papers aloud, copious notes and extracts 
being simultaneously made ; but instead of composing 
in solitude and having recourse to the stylus and 
noctograph, he relied rather upon dictation to his 
secretary, who would write down the narrative as he 
pronounced it. "This process," he adds cheerfully 
of his own general plan, " though extremely slow and 
laborious, was not without its advantages, and I am 
well convinced- that the authorities have been even 
more minutely examined, more scrupulously collected, 
and more thoroughl}^ digested than they would have 
been under ordinary circumstances." 

The habit of travelling, to visit described localities, 



8 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

— favored as it is so greatly in later times by our 
improved facilities of travel, — is one for every nar- 
rator of events to turn to account; for not only may 
interesting traditions be gathered on the spot, but 
one procures details of local coloring which others 
could never catalogue for him, and gains besides the 
inspiration of great surroundings. To Mr. Parkman, 
with his delicate constitution, such journeys must 
have afforded a relaxing relief and diversion, besides 
the indulgence of a strong natural taste and disposi- 
tion. Through wild regions of the North and West, 
by the camp-fu-e or in the canoe, he had already 
gained familiar acquaintance, and he still continued 
to visit and examine every spot, near or remote, 
where the important incidents which he described 
occurred. The extensive seat of the final French 
and Indian struggle, the whole region of Detroit, the 
St. Lawrence, and Plains of Abraham, as well as 
remote Florida, became thus familiar to him. "In 
short," as he wrote in 1884, reiterating what he had 
said in other volumes already, " the subject has been 
studied as much from life in the open air as at the 
library table." 

But none the less was Mr. Parkman a steady 
worker in his library; and his search for original 
documents and among masses of rare material was 
incessant. Whatever might be the immediate sub- 
ject, he gathered such valuable collections of papers, 
in any way accessible, as might aid his description. 
The truth of the past, and the whole truth, he dili- 
gently inquired into. He was not content with sec- 
ondary authorities, but searched for primary ones in 
the most conscientious and thorough manner; and 
he founded each narrative as largely as possible upon 
original and contemporary materials, collating with 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 9 

the greatest care, and only accepting the statements 
of secondary writers when found to conform to those 
who lived in the times. In short, as he expressed 
himself, he was too fond of his theme to neglect any 
means within his reach of making his conception of 
it distinct and true. All this was necessitated to a 
considerable extent by the crude and promiscuous 
character of the publications offered in the present 
choice of subjects; for the history of the French 
colonization in America was as wild, when Mr. 
Parkman took it up for research, as that colonization 
itself. "The field of the history," as he forcibly 
observes, " was uncultured and unreclaimed, and the 
labor that awaited me was like that of the border 
settler, who, before he builds his rugged dwelling, 
must fell the forest trees, burn the undergrowth, 
clear the ground, and hew the fallen trunks in due 
proportion." Yet under the old French rdgime in 
Canada the pen was always busy, and among reports 
to be found in the French archives were voluminous 
records. To make his investigations closer he visited 
Europe in 1858, soon after the death of his wife, and 
prosecuted his researches among the public collections 
of France, Spain, and England. Other visits followed 
in 1868, 1872, 1880, and 1881, after the scope of his 
historical work had enlarged, chiefly at Paris. His 
preparations for composition were thus exhaustive, 
and he spared neither labor nor expense. Nor with 
all his j)reparation did he feel that his work could be 
satisfactory unless as a narrator he could enter fully 
into the atmosphere of the times he described. " Faith- 
fulness to the truth of history," as he justly observed, 
" involves far more than a research, however patient 
and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may 
be detailed mth the most minute exactness, and still 



10 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning 
or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself 
with the life and spirit of the time. He must study 
events in their bearings, near and remote; in the 
character, habits, and manners of those who took 
part in them. He must himself be, as it were, a 
sharer or spectator of the men he describes." 

Two other observations from Mr. Parkman's pen 
are so apt and admirable that we cannot refrain from 
quoting them. One relates to historical citation, a 
matter in which critics are apt to be over-exacting, 
as though historians ought to load down pages with 
pedantic notes, the usual display of second-hand 
assistance, and not be trusted at all upon their respon- 
sible statements. Observing on his own behalf that 
his citations are much less than his material, most of 
the latter being of a collateral and illustrative nature, 
"such," he well adds, "is necessarily the case, where 
one adhering to facts tries to animate them with the 
life of the past. " And, again, seeking to be fair and 
impartial in his estimates of men and measures, he 
challenged the descendants of those who thought him 
otherwise to test his proofs. " As extremists on each 
side," he wrote finally at the close of his labors, 
"have charged me with favoring the other, I hope I 
have not been unfair to either." 

With views of his vocation so just and honorable, 
Mr. Parkman, slowly of necessity, but ^dth firm 
tenaciousness, wrought out his literary plans. His 
first work, "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," in two 
volumes, was published in 1851 : the subject being a 
dramatic one of war and of conquest, and chosen by 
himself most happily for the portrayal of forest life 
and the Indian character. It was not until January, 
1865, that his next volume appeared, on " Pioneers of 



FRANCIS PARKMAK 11 

France in the New World ; " and meanwhile he had 
made an unsuccessful venture with a work of pure 
fiction. So long a gap in his historical labors he 
never left again; for by this time he had accepted 
sickness and physical trial as permanent incidents of 
his career, while his historical plan had widened into 
its fullest scoj)e. At first intending to limit himself 
to the great closing struggle for supremacy between 
France and Great Britain, he had decided at length 
to cover the whole field of French colonization in 
America. Under such an arrangement, "Pontiac's 
Conspiracy " would take its place as a sequel to his 
works written later, while its own introductory sketch 
served as the base of more extended and consecutive 
narratives to follow. Other volumes were accord- 
ingly under way when " Pioneers of France " appeared ; 
and in 1867 he published " Jesuits in North America," 
a thrilling record of missionary labors, which was 
followed in 18G9 by " La Salle, and the Discovery of 
the Great West," a recital of explorations about the 
upper Mississippi. "The Old Regime in Canada" 
came out in 1874, treating of the transition period of 
1653-1680 ; and to this succeeded, in 1877, " Count 
Frontenac, and New France under Louis XIV.," the 
story of the bravest warrior and viceroy France ever 
sent to this continent. These works, following the 
earliest, were in single volumes, each taking its inde- 
pendent place in a series of narratives entitled " France 
and England in the New World." By this time the 
patient scholar had reached the full prime of life, and 
time admonished him to economize his remaining 
strength to the utmost. He interrupted the course 
of description sufficiently to make sure of that romantic 
period, the British conquest of Canada, which had 
first captivated his youthful imagination. " Montcalm 



12 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

and Wolfe," a work of two volumes, was therefore 
his next undertakmg ; this he finished by 1884, soon 
after rounding his threescore years ; and leaving the 
climax of battle upon the Plains of Abraham for a 
closing scene, he now turned back once more with 
his veteran pen to fill the intervening gap. In 1892 
two more volumes, entitled "The Half-Century of 
Conflict," and embracing the period 1700-1748, 
preceded " Montcalm and Wolfe " in the completed 
series. Mr. Parkman's monumental work, in spite 
of intervening obstacles which prolonged its execu- 
tion, was now finished, with the same conscientious, 
thorough, and painstaking devotion which had always 
characterized him, and he now took final leave of his 
labors. His calculation of allotted strength had not 
been wide of the mark, for the very next year after 
laying down the historical pen his earthly limit was 
reached. He died a gentle death on the 8tli of 
November, 1893. 

]Mr. Parkman's peculiar merits as a historian we 
have already indicated, — thoroughness of prepara- 
tion, a painstaking accuracy, justness in balancing 
authorities, scholarly tastes and comprehension, and 
the constant disposition to be truthful and impartial, 
to which were added skill and an artistic grace and 
dignity in composition. His style was crystal-clear 
and melodious as a mountain brook, which flows 
obedient to easy impulse, setting off tlie charms of 
natural scenery by its own exquisite naturalness. 
The aroma of the woods and of woodland life is in all 
his books, among which, perhaps, "The Conspiracy 
of Pontiac " will remain the favorite. Here and con- 
stantly in dealing with the Indian, with the primeval 
American landscape and its primeval inhal)itants, his 
touch is masterl}^ and unapproachable; and so, too, 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 13 

in describing the sympathetic contact of France with 
a race whicli British interference doomed to destrnc-- 
tion. French explorers, French missionaries and 
warriors, stand ont lifeUke from tliese interesting 
narratives, since lie wrote to interest and not merely 
to instruct. Generalization and the broader historical 
lessons are to be found rather in the pages of his 
preface, as Mr. Parkman wrote, than in the narra- 
tives themselves, most of his later subjects being, in 
fact, extended ones for the compass of the book ; and 
with his wealth of materials he kept closely to the 
tale. But in these preliminary, or rather final, de- 
ductions may be found pregnant passages of force and 
eloquence. 

A life so symmetrical in its literary scope and 
occupation, and so minutely adjusted to the draw- 
backs of ill-health, could hardly have projected far 
into the active concerns of his age. On a few occa- 
sions only Mr. Parkman was tempted to discuss 
problems of the day in the magazines, when the con- 
servatism of his temperament became manifest. His 
clear preference was for literary topics and subjects 
cognate to his studies. He felt, however, and felt 
deeply, the tremendous tumult, culminating in bloody 
strife, which went on without his domestic cell , and 
the preface to his "Pioneers of France," a volume 
published just before that fratricidal conflict ended, 
and dedicated to young kinsmen "slain in battle," 
reads like a solemn requiem. Somewhat later, after 
victory for freedom and the Union developed evil 
tendencies, his mind once more compared the regime 
of earlier centuries, and noted those vices in which 
democracy and autocracy approach one another. A 
home atmosphere made his studious seclusion redolent 
of lifelong friendships and attachments. A widower 



14 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

for half his life, with two daughters who have married 
and survived him, his winters were usually passed in 
the heart of his native Boston, and his summers in a 
once picturesque suburb, long since comprised within 
the same civic confines. He dedicated his various 
volumes to kinsmen dear to him, to a choice friend or 
two who had lightened his studies by helpful sym- 
pathy, to his college class of 1844, and, finally, and 
for the last time, to Harvard College, the alma mater 
under whose influence, as he acknowledged, his life 
purpose had been conceived. 

To the Massachusetts Historical Society, of which 
he was vice-president and a most honored member, 
Mr. Parkman gave from time to time his collections 
of manuscript material used in the preparation of his 
works, which formed, when completed, some seventy 
volumes, mostly in folio. Harvard honored him with 
its degree of LL.D., and he served upon its Board 
of Overseers, and more lately as one of the Corpora- 
tion Fellows. But his immediate interests extended 
elsewhere as his fame increased. In recognition of 
his taste for gardening he was chosen president of the 
Massachusetts Horticultural Society, besides occupy- 
ing for two years a chair in the Agricultural Depart- 
ment of his own University. 

When in 1880 was formed in Boston the St. Botolph 
Club, whose especial aim was to bring together men 
of talent and eminence in art, literature, and the 
professions, wealth being regarded secondary, Mr. 
Parkman was its conspicuous choice for president, 
and for six years he filled that trust with marked zeal 
and fidelity; and after declining health compelled 
him to retire, he still stood upon its list as vice-presi- 
dent. Faithful in these earlier years to its interests, 
he was constantly to be seen at its Saturday evening 



FRANCIS PARKMAN. 15 

gatherings, genial and approacliable to all, and pro- 
moting its hospitalities by as cordial a solicitude as 
though he were host in his own private parlors. 
Many of other circles in life, who met him then and 
there for the first and only times, were surprised to 
find him in appearance, when approaching threescore, 
not an invalid bent with years and sufferings, deli- 
cate, with pallid face furrowed with wrinkles, but 
decidedly elastic in step, fresh and handsome in 
appearance, with an impressive aspect of well-pre- 
served and even healthful maturity. His height 
could scarcely have been an inch under six feet ; his 
whole frame was compacted and even sturdy-looking ; 
his hair, though tinged with gray, Avas abundant, 
and his head and full neck were firmly set upon broad 
and capable shoulders. He showed a high forehead, 
a face closely shaven, which exposed strong and 
resolute features, a chin and mouth bespeaking firm- 
hess and persistency, at the same time that his beam- 
ing eyes, of a soft brown color, were full of kindly 
and even tender expression. In his whole demeanor 
he showed dignity and an innate gentility happily 
comlDined. A portrait of two thirds length, painted 
at this period and an excellent likeness, is among the 
ornaments of the club in its new house ; and on the 
evening following Mr. Parkman's funeral, when 
the members gathered for a memorial meeting, and 
this oil painting in its appropriate frame, decked with 
crape and laurel, stood in the picture gallery with a 
full light thrown upon it, it truly seemed, while one 
after another in sombre shadow pronounced a tribute, 
that the gentle and graceful figure was about to glide 
forward from the canvas to give a parting hand-grasp 
in silent and sympathetic benediction. 



HISTORICAL GROUPING. 

Not far from where I am now standing, a grateful 
city has erected a stately monument to its soldiers 
and sailors who died in the late Civil War. This 
monument was erected about fifteen years after the 
war was over. At the base from which rises its pure 
granite shaft, may be seen bas-reliefs in bronze, one 
for each side, which depict appropriate scenes, with 
portraits to recall the heroic men who bore part in 
them. One of these metallic studies idealizes the 
departure of a Massachusetts regiment, in 1861, for 
the seat of war. How often do I recall that scene, 
as I many times witnessed it in impressible youth! 
Most fitly, the artist's central figure is that of our 
immortal war governor, John A. Andrew. But 
among the images grouped about him, that of the 
man is absent who, next to the governor himself, 
bore the chief part in organizing and despatching our 
State troops, and whose face was scarcely less familiar 
to our Massachusetts soldiers, whether departing or 
returning. Others historically associated with such 
scenes are wanting; while among the embossed like- 
nesses more or less appropriate, which are here pre- 
served for posterity, one is that of a distinguished 
citizen who in 1861 was crying down war, and urg- 
ing that Southern States be permitted to secede in 

Read before the American Historical Association, at Boston, 
May 23, 1887. 



HISTORICAL GROUPING. 17 

peace; another likeness recalls a son honored here 
indeed, years later, but who through this whole 
period of fraternal strife resided in a far distant State 
and city. I do not bring up this circumstance for 
reproach, but because it fitly introduces and illustrates 
the point to which I wish briefly to direct your 
attention. My subject is Historical Grouping, or 
what, perhaps, I might better style Historical Back- 
ground. Whatever memorable scenes of the past it 
may be the function of historian or historical painter 
to recall, he should delineate with scrupulous fidelity 
to truth the lesser as well as the greater surround- 
ings; his canvas should group those together, and 
only those, who were actually related to the event 
and worked out in unison the great issue. Two 
chief considerations enforce this duty: (1) That in 
the mad zeal of our modern age for present and 
future, the past is easily overlaid and obliterated; 
(2) That while Fame takes decent care of her chief 
hero, of the actor most responsible, she easily neglects 
the subordinates, however indispensable their parts 
misfht have been. " Set me down as I am " is the 
common appeal of patriots of every rank to posterity 
and the impartial historian ; and the true relation to 
the event which the scholar must consider is not that 
of one individual, but of many, in the nicely graded 
proportion of foreground and background. 

The Chief Executive, the warlike commander, the 
great personification of his time, him we follow with 
the eye ; we discuss and re-discuss his achievements ; 
we analyze his traits, over and over, even until wfe 
obscure them by our own ingenuity; we study his 
individual growth from infancy up, anxious to dis- 
cover in a single brain, if we may, the seed which 
must have germinated in other minds and dispersed 

2 



18 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

results to germinate again and still more widely, 
before tlie perfect flower and perfect opportunity 
could possibly have bloomed. The great hero of the 
age is still, as ever, the man most responsible for 
what was successfully accomplished; yet what hero 
ever achieved a great success, except by happily 
combining the wisdom, skill, and valor of others 
whose ideas, whose lives were intertwined with his 
own, and by bringing this whole subordinate force to 
bear properly upon the occasion ? Let us look more 
particularly to the manifold influences and counter 
influences which work out the great problems of an 
age and republican system like our own. The public 
movements of American society in the present century 
are not accomplished without the combined force of 
elements more or less hidden from the casual vision, 
which in a large degree are coequal. The scholar, 
the recluse philosopher, the poet, the orator, the 
editor, the teacher, the legislator, the statesman, 
gives each an impulse and direction to afl^airs far 
greater, in normal times, than the professional warrior. 
Nor is it the individual mind that sways American 
politics, but rather the majority or average mind, the 
mind that has been brought by toilsome precept and 
discipline to the point of earnest conviction. History 
has its leaders still; but the leader who unites the 
highest expression of thought and action rarely 
appears in the modern days; our foremost adminis- 
trator is apt to be more vigorous than original, and 
in this country, at least, we look no longer for the 
autocrat, the warrior chief, who plans conquests and 
drains his people that he may march an army whither- 
soever he will. A further thought rises in this con- 
nection; namely, that the reputation once achieved 
has now no sure bulwark to protect it. The sacrifi- 



HISTORICAL GROUPING. 19 

cial days are over. The people observe no longer the 
calendar of their demi-gods. Ulysses cannot reckon 
upon offices of tenderness, when he is gone, from his 
blameless Telemachus. So great and so constant 
becomes the pressure and counter pressure of ideas 
in our modern life, that civilization seems to wear 
into the solid land itself, like some turbulent torrent, 
washing away at one bank and bringing down allu- 
vium at another. The past, with its traditions and 
examples, is ignored; not that we mean to falsify, 
but that we are indifferent to it; novelties absorb the 
present attention; the son cavils at the faults and 
limitations of the father; and in the headlong and 
incessant push and jostle of men, parties, and ideas, 
it is not enough for fame that a man filled well the 
measure of his own age, if a new age requires new 
measures. 

Such being our present situation, in place of the 
few ambitious great, we find the scope fast enlarging 
for the many men and tlieir petty and manifold ambi- 
tions. And no easier or cheaper means of gratifying 
a petty ambition can be found than in clustering 
about the leaders who have gained recognition and 
come into fashion, buzzing at their ears, and borrow- 
ing somewhat of the lustre and prestige of good 
neighborhood. Of the deserving recipients of applause 
some die late, some early; all do not leave their 
papers sorted and ready for posterity to judge of 
their own admitted inspiration. Here, then, is the 
opportunity for the parasite, the flatterer, the 
eleventh-hour convert, indeed, for all survivors who 
can grasp the key of the situation for themselves and 
their friends, to work seasonably upon the platform 
and into the conspicuous background, when the artist 
appears: just as loiterers elsewhere insinuate them- 



20 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

selves into a group when they see the camera mounted.. 
The picture is taken and pkiced on exhibition for the 
admiration of posterity. Who are not friends, who 
are not enthusiasts, when the man, the cause, has 
triumphed? And as for the artist whose handicraft 
was thus employed, why should he be less susceptible 
to the kindness of benefactors than the great masters 
into whose immortal paintings of saints and martyrs, 
and of the Holy Family itself, were introduced the 
portraits of their own patron bishops and duchesses ? 
Against all this false grouping for historical effect, 
wherever it may be found, this sordid commingling 
of souls noble and ignoble, this separation of the 
acknowledged leader from associations which com- 
bined to produce his great action, and gave him 
strength, dignity, and sympathy at tlie momentous 
opportunity, I invoke the justice, the scholarship, 
and the incorruptible honor of the historian. Let 
him take his impartial stand among bygone men and 
events, and, so far as in him lies, reproduce the past 
as it was. Let him extricate reputations from the 
dust of oblivion and cunning entanglements, and 
award posthumous honors anew without fear or favor. 
Let him observe the laws of perspective, and bring 
foreground and background into their just and har- 
monious relation. Let him distinguish scrupulously 
between the recognition which follows success and 
that rarer sort which precedes it in the day of personal 
sacrifice. And in order to do all this, let him not 
trust too closely to epitaphs placed on tombstones of 
the dead by the immediate survivors, nor to effigies 
bronze or brazen; for much depends upon the bias 
and worldly hopes of the men who set them in posi- 
tion. To rescue history from the age most dangerous 
because most likely to pervert its truth, and yet at the 



HISTORICAL GROUPING. 21 

same time the age most plausible in its expression — 
that age, I mean, which next succeeds the event 
— should command one's diligent effort. For every 
epoch is best read and explained by its own light, by 
its own contemporaneous record; and every other 
record ought to be held but secondary and subservient 
in comparison by the student who searches for the 
real truth of events. This last observation may be 
thought a trite one ; but I am well convinced that it 
is at the very foundation of historical study and 
criticism, such as a society like ours ought to practise 
and inculcate. 



SPIRIT OF RESEARCH. 

What, let us ask, is history? And by what image 
may we present to the mind of the student a proper 
conception of that department of study? Emerson, 
our American Phxto, pictures as a vast sea tlie uni- 
versal mind to which all other minds have access. 
"Of the works of this mind," he adds, "history is 
the record." That idea is a leading one of this phi- 
losopher. Man he considers the encyclopedia, the 
epitome of facts; the thought, he observes, is always 
prior to the fact, and is wrought out in human 
action. 

Such a conception may suit the philosophic mind; 
it may commend itself to men of thought, as con- 
trasted with men of action. But it seems to me too 
vast if not too vague a definition for an appropriate 
basis to historical investigation. No one can project 
history upon such a plan, except man's ]\Iaker, the 
Universal ]\Iind itself. Thought itself may precede 
the fact, but the two do not coincide nor form a per- 
fect sequence. The empire of thought differs- greatly 
from that of personal action; we each live but one 
life, while we may propose a hundred. The works 
of the mind involve all knowledge, ail reasoning, all 
experience. Nor can we with accuracy picture the 
human mind as a tranquil sea tossing only in its own 

Read before the American Historical Association, at Washington, 
December 31, 1889. 



SPIRIT OF RESEARCH. 23 

agitations, but rather as an onward force working 
through strong physical barriers. History, in truth, 
is the record of human thought in active motion, of 
thought which is wrought out into action, of events 
in their real and recorded sequence. The individual 
acts upon his external surroundings ; those surround- 
ings react upon him and upon his fellows. Men, 
tribes, nations, thus acting, mould one another's career 
and are moulded in return. History leaves the whole 
boundless empire of unfettered mental philosophy, of 
fiction, of imagination. It deals with facts ; it notes 
and narrates what has actually transpired and by 
whose agency ; and it draws where it may the moral. 
History, in short, is the record of consecutive events, 
— of consecutive public events. 

This broad truth should be kept in view, that the 
human mind (under which term we comprise volition, 
and not the intellectual process alone), that the indi- 
vidual character acts upon the circumstances sur- 
rounding it, upon external nature, upon external 
fellow-beings. These persons and things external 
not only modify and influence one's attempted action, 
but modify his thought and feeling ; they react upon 
him, form and influence his character, his destiny. 
This makes human history, and it makes the forecast 
of that history forever uncertain. 

The picture, then, that we should prefer to present 
to the imagination is not of one vast universal mind, 
calmly germinating, fermenting, conceiving; not of 
one mind at equilibrium, having various inlets — but 
of a torrent in motion. They did wisely and naturally 
who mapped out for us a stream of history flowing 
onward, and widening and branching in its flow. 
Downward and onward, this impetuous torrent of 
human life obeys its own law of gravitation. It 



24 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

advances like a river, with its feeders or its deltas; 
or like the march of an immense army, now re-en- 
forced, now dividing into columns, now reuniting, — 
but going forever on and never backward. Let us 
reject, therefore, the idea of an a i^riori history and 
whatever conception conjures up a human mind plan- 
ning history in advance and then executing it. 
Buckle was oppressed to death by the burden of such 
an idea as that of reducing the whole history of this 
world's civilization to a law of natural selection. 
There is no rigid scientific development to the human 
race. The particle of divine essence which is in 
man formulates, creates, compels to its will, changes 
because of its desire for change ; though, after all, it 
bends to the laws of natural necessity. The man of 
genius may invent; he may construct a wonderful 
motive-engine which jDropels by steam or electricity ; 
yet he may be battered to pieces by this same machine, 
if ignorant or careless of some latent physical cause. 
We speak, too, of prophecy; but prophecy is vague. 
" Westward, " says Bishop Berkeley, "the course of 
empire takes its way;" and he looked through the 
vista of a century. But who, of all our statesmen 
and philanthropists who flourished forty years ago, — 
and wise and great, indeed, were many of them, — fore- 
told with accuracy how and through what agencies the 
problem of American slavery, which they so earnestly 
discussed, would reach its historical solution ? 

To take, then, our simile of the onward torrent 
from distant sources, or the army advancing from 
afar: observe how absorbed was ancient history with 
the larger streams fed by hidden fountains ; how its 
narrative was confined to the great leaders of thou- 
sands and tens of thousands. But in modern history 
each individual has his relative place ; and looking as 



SPIRIT OF RESEARCH. 25 

through a microscope we see an intricate network of 
rills from wliich the full stream is supplied. In this 
consists the difference between ancient and modern 
life, ancient and modern history. Simplicity is tHe 
characteristic of the primitive age; complexity is^ 
that of our present civilized and widely multiplied 
society. The ancient force was the force of the pre- 
eminent leader, — of the king, the warrior chief ; but 
the modern force is that rather of combined mankind, 
—of the majority. Individuals were formerly absorbed 
under the domination of a single controlling will, but 
now they are blended or subdued by the co-operation 
of mils, among which the greatest or the pre-eminent 
is hard to discover. The course of history all the 
while is consecutive, knowing no cessation. There 
is a present, a past, and a future; but the present 
soon becomes the past, the future takes its turn as 
the present. And, after all, the only clear law of 
history is that of motion incessantly onward. 

As students of history, we seek next a subject and 
a point of view. Look, then, upon this vast chart of 
the world's progress. Retrace its course, if you will, 
and choose where you shall explore. Do not choose 
at random, but with this great universal record to 
guide you as a chart; as a chart capable, indeed, of 
correction, but in the main correct enough to serve 
the navigator. Having thus chosen, circumscribe 
your work: confine your exploration to a particular 
country, to a particular period, say of twenty, thirty, 
or a hundi'ed years ; let your scrutiny be close, and 
discover what you may to render the great chart 
fuller and more accurate than hitherto. If universal 
history be your subject, you will not go far beyond 
tracing the bold headlands, while oij. the other hand, 



with a small compass of work, ydu may contribute 



wnile on tne 
rork, ycii ma 



26 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

much information of genuine value to your age. 
ExjDlore from some starting-point; you can descend 
upon it like a hawk. You may require some time 
to study its vicinity, to look back and consider what 
brought the stream to this point. But your main 
investigation will be not by exploring to a source, 
but by following the stream in its onward and 
downward current. In the present age one must 
be ignorant of much if he would be proficient in 
something. 

Our chart of history opens like an atlas ; it presents 
page after page of equal size, but with a lessening 
area for the sake of an increasing scale. One j)age 
exhibits a hemisphere, another a continent, another 
a nation; others, in turn, the state, the county, the 
municipal unit. From a world we may thus reduce 
the focus, until we have mapped within the same 
spaces a town or city, or even a single house ; from a 
population of millions we may come down to a tribe, 
a family, or even (as in a biography) to a single indi- 
vidual, and we retrace the human course accordingly. 
Or we may trace backwards, as the genealogist does, 
in an order reverse to biography or general history. 
As we have projected, so we work, we investigate. 
In such an atlas as I am describing, how different 
appear both civil and physical configurations at 
different epochs. Compare, for instance, a map of 
the United States of our latest date with earlier ones 
in succession from 1787. Not only in national names 
and boundaries do they differ, not only in the obscure 
or erroneous delineation of lakes and rivers in unex- 
plored regions, but in that dotting of towns and 
cities, that marking of county divisions, which posi- 
tively indicates the advance of a settled population 
and settled State governments. Maps of different 



SPIRIT OF RESEARCH. 27 

epochs like these, where they exist, are part of a 
permanent historical record. 

Involved in the study of any civilization is the 
study of its religion, of its literature, of its political 
and military movements, of the appliances of science, 
of the changes and development of trade, commerce, 
and industries. Each of these influences may be 
traced apart, or their combined influence may be 
shown upon the course of some great people. In 
this present enlightened age, nations intersect one 
another more and more in their interests, and you 
may feel the pulse of the whole civilized world 
through the daily press. How different the task of 
preparing such a history as the nineteenth century 
requires, from that of ancient Athens, of China, of 
mediseval Britain, of early America. But in all tasks 
unity and selection should be the aim, and above all 
circumscription. One must measure out his work 
with exactness, make careful estimates, and work the 
huge materials into place, besides using his pencil 
with the dignity and grace of an artist. In a word, 
he should be an architect. It is because of this union 
of the ideal and practical that Michael Angelo deserves 
the first place among men distinguished in the fine 
arts. And for this reason, too, we may well rank 
Gibbon as the foremost among historians ; as greater, 
indeed, than Thucydides, Sallust, or any other of 
those classical writers who have so long been held up 
for modern reverence. And this is because, with 
sldll equally or nearly as great as theirs, he conceived 
and wrought out a task far more difficult. In his- 
torical narrative the greatest triumph consists in 
tracing out and delineating with color and accuracy a 
variety of intricate influences which contribute to 
the main result. And who has done this so well as 



28 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

the author of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire," that greatest of all historical themes, that 
most impressive and momentous of all human events ? 
See the hand of the master unfolding the long train 
of emperors and potentates ; painting the revolt and 
irruption of distant nations, of remote tribes ; gather- 
ing upon his canvas the Greeks, the Scythians, the 
Arabs, Mohammed and his followers, the fathers of 
the Christian Church, the Goths and northern barba- 
rians, who were destined to shape the civilization of 
modern Europe; leading his readers with stately 
tread through the whole grand pathway down which 
the highest type of a pagan civilization sank slowly 
into the shades and dissolution of the dark ages. I 
will not deny that Gibbon had faults as a historian ; 
that his stately pomp might become wearisome, that 
he partook somewhat of the French sensuousness and 
scepticism which surrounded him as he labored. 
But of his profound scholarship and artistic skill 
there can be no question. Contrast with a task like 
his the simple narrative of some brief strife under a 
few heroes or a single one, — like the history of the 
Peloponnesian or Jugurthine war, or like that of the 
Cortes invasion of Mexico which our own Prescott 
has so admirably descriljed, — and see how immense is 
the difference. Yet I would not be understood to 
disparage these other writers with simpler subjects. 
They have instructed and interested posterity and 
their own times, their fame is deservedly lasting; 
there is room in historical literature for them and for 
all. And our Anglo-Saxon appears to be, of all his- 
torical explorers, the best adapted to portray the 
manners and events of foreign nations and distant 
times. Thucydides and Xenophon wrote each of his 
own country alone ; and so did Sallust, Li^y, Tacitus. 



SPIRIT OF RESEARCH. 29 

But Gibbon perfected himself in a foreign literature 
and tongue so as to write of other lands; and so, 
too, did our Prescott and Motley. 

Here let us observe how much easier it is to be 
graphic, to interest and attract the reader, when one's 
story has simple unity and relates to personal exploit. 
Biography, or the study of individual leaders, is at 
the foundation of the narratives which are most 
widely read and most popular; in the Bible, for 
instance, in Homer, in the wars of Alexander, Csesar, 
or Napoleon. Biography excites interest because it 
develops, as in the reader's own experience, the 
growth of a certain individual life to which all other 
lives bear but an incidental relation; and for this 
reason, too, biography is partial. The modern tem- 
perament, however, leads us to investigate, besides, 
the growth of the people who were ruled, the devel- 
opment of their laws, manners, customs, and institu- 
tions. In either case the interest that moves the 
reader is human. That military and political course 
of a community with which historj^ is chiefly engrossed 
moves far differently, to be sure, under an absolute 
monarch than in a democracy; in the former case 
foibles and caprice are those of a person, in the latter 
they are those of a whole people. Yet we observe 
in all but the ruder ages of mankind the refining 
influence upon rulers which is exerted by philosophy, 
by religion, literature, and the arts. Note this, for 
example, under the reign of Solomon, of Pericles, of 
Alexander, of Constantine; and yet it is a lasting 
regret to posterity that out of epochs like theirs so 
little is left on record concerning the daily lives and 
habits of the people they governed. That must be 
a rigid tyranny, indeed, whose government has not 
recognized to some extent the strono- thouoh insen- 



30 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

sible force of popular customs. Custom constantly 
crj'stallizes into laws, which the legislature, the 
court, or the monarch stamps with authority; and 
thus are local institutions pruned and trained like the 
grape-vine on a trellis. We find in the most primi- 
tive society wills and the transmission of property 
recognized ; buying and selling ; trade and commerce 
(whence come revenue and personal prosperity); 
marriage and the seclusion, greater or less, of the 
family circle. How seldom has the reader associated 
all these with the wealth of Solomon and the Queen 
of Slieba, with the vicissitudes of Croesus, the volup- 
tuous pleasures of Xerxes, Cleopatra, or the later 
Ceesars ; and yet it is certain that unless the subjects 
of monarchs like these had pursued their private 
business successfully, amassed fortunes of their own, 
brought up families and increased in numbers, the 
monarch could not have been arrayed with such 
luxury; for royal revenues come from taxation, and 
the richest kings and nobles take but a percentage 
from the general wealth. The customs of one nation 
are borrowed by others ; Moses, Lycurgus, Solon, 
among the great lawgivers, framed codes each for his 
own people after observing the institutions of other 
and older countries, and considering how best to 
adapt them. Government has rightly been likened 
to a coat which is cut differently to fit each figure, 
each nation , and, more than this, the garb itself may 
differ in pattern, since the object is to clothe different 
communities appropriately to the tastes and habits of 
each. We shall continue to regret, then, that the 
ancient writers have left us so little real illustration 
concerning the habits of these earlier peoples, — how 
they worked and sported, and what was their inter- 
course and mode of life. Research in archaeology 



SPIRIT OF RESEARCH. 31 

may yet supply such information in a measure ; and 
of the institutions, the embodied customs, we have, 
fortunately, some important remains. No contribu- 
tion survives, more valuable to this end, than the 
books of Roman jurisprudence which were compiled 
under Justinian. Though one of the lesser rulers of 
that once illustrious empire, he has left a fame for 
modern times more conspicuous than that of Julius 
or Augustus Csesar; and this is because he brought 
into permanent and enduring form for the guidance 
and instruction of all succeeding ages the wisest 
laws, the best epitome of human experience, the 
broadest embodiment of customs, which ever regu- 
lated ancient society in the mutual dealings of man 
and man. 

As for the progress of our modern society which 
emerges from the mediaeval age succeeding the Roman 
collapse, its advance in knowledge and the arts, in 
the successive changes of manners and pursuits, there 
is much yet to be gathered and exposed to view for 
illustration; though with respect to England we owe 
much to Macaulay for setting an example of investi- 
gation upon that broader line which Niebuhr and 
others of his school had initiated for Roman history. 
And Macaulay achieved the additional triumph of 
making such investigation attractive. Statutes and 
judicial reports (to quote Daniel Webster) are over- 
flowing fountains of knowledge respecting tlie progress 
of Anglo-Saxon societ}', from feudalism down to the 
full splendor of the commercial age. And from the 
modern invention of printing, let us add, and particu- 
larly since the growth and development of the modern 
press, we find (with all the faults of fecundity and 
fallibility which are peculiar to journalism) a picture 
of the world's daily life set forth which far surpasses 



32 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

in its vivid and continuous detail any collection 
of ancient records. Our modern newspaper may 
pander for the sake of gain ; it may avow no higher 
aim in affairs than to please a paying constituency j 
and yet, for better or worse, it wields and will con- 
tinue to wield an immense power. The reporter may 
be brazen-faced, inclined to scandalous gossip and 
ribaldry; the news may be spread forth disjointed, 
founded on false rumor, requiring correction; edito- 
rial comments may be wilfully partisan, or thundered 
from the Olympus lieight of a safe circulation ; but, 
even at its worst, so long as it is duly curbed by the 
laws of libel so essential for the citizens' protection, 
what with advertisements, business news, the discus- 
sion of current topics, the description of passing 
events and the transient impression made by them, our 
newspaper holds the mirror up to modern society; 
wliile at its best, journalism sits in her chariot, pencil 
in hand, like that marble muse herself in our national 
capitol, over the timepiece of the age. The news- 
paper's truest revelation is that unconscious one of 
the passions and prejudice of the times, and of that 
cast of popular thouglit under which events were 
born ; it preserves imperishable the fashion prevailing, 
for posterity to look upon with reverence or a smile. 
But in the present age the journalist should beware 
how he presents his columns to bear the double weight 
of universal advertiser and universal purveyor of 
knowledge, lest he make a chaos of the whole. As 
in the former centuries records were scanty, so in the 
century to come they will be found superabundant, 
unless fire or deluge diminish them. Pregnant facts, 
such as in the past we search for in vain, lie buried, 
under prevalent methods, in bushel-heaps of worth- 
less assertion. To know the old era, you must search 



SPIRIT OF RESEARCH. 33 

with a lantern; to know the new era, you must 
winnow. 

Research is a fitting word to apply in historical 
studies; for by this word we import that one is not 
content to skim the surface of past events, but prefers 
to probe, to investigate, to turn the soil for himself. 
It is original exploration which makes such studies 
attractive and stimulating. We walk the streets of 
buried cities and roam through the deserted houses, 
once instinct with life, piercing the lava crust of 
careless centuries; we place our hearts and minds, 
richer by accumulated experience, close to the pas- 
sions and intellects of an earlier age ; and we listen 
to the heart-beat of a race of mankind who reached 
forward, as our own race is reaching and as all races 
reach in turn, to catch the omens of a far off destiny. 
The grand results and the grand lessons of human 
life are ours in the retrospect, and in the retrospect 
alone. And while retracing thus the footprints of 
the past, we shall do well if we deduce the right 
moral; if we judge of human actions dispassionately 
and as befits scholars of riper times and a broader 
revelation; if we keep under due constraint that 
laudable but dangerous passion for new discovery, so 
as neither to revive buried calumnies nor to weigh 
evidence with a perverted bias to novelty. Let our 
judgment give full force to the presumption that the 
long-settled opinion is the true one, and let our spirit 
of research be imbued at all times with the fearless 
purpose to know and to promulgate the truth. 



HISTORICAL INDUSTRIES. 

Historians are sometimes said to be a long-lived 
race. To historical students, at all events, this is a 
comfortable theory. Recent examples of a productive 
old age, such as Ranke so long supplied, and our own 
illustrious George Bancroft, may have lent strong 
force to the supposition. History herself, no doubt, 
is a long-winded muse, and demands of each votary 
the power of continuance. But I doubt whether sta- 
tistics would bear out strongly this theory of a long- 
lived race. Among modern historians, well-known, 
who have died a natural death, neither Niebuhr, 
Gibbon, Macaulay, nor Hildreth reached his sixtieth 
year ; both Prescott and Motley died at about sixty- 
three.^ On the other hand, to take poets alone whom 
many of us may have seen in the flesh, both Long- 
fellow and Lowell passed, well preserved, the bounds 
of threescore years and ten ; while Bryant, Whittier, 
and Holmes, the last of whom still vigorously sur- 
vives, enjoyed life much beyond fourscore; and of 
English composers the most famous, both Tennyson 
and Browning mellowed long before they dropped. 

Undoubtedly, however, steady and systematic brain- 
work without brain worry, conduces to health and 

Read before the American Historical Association, at Chicafjo, 
July 11, 1893. 

1 Francis Parkman has recently died at the age of seventy, longer 
spared for his work than any of those above mentioned. 



HISTORICAL INDUSTRIES. 35 

long life, whatever be the special occupation; and 
who may better claim that precious condition of mind 
than tlie average historian ? For of all literary pur- 
suits none on the whole appears so naturally allied to 
competent means and good family. Public office and 
influence — the making of history — have belonged 
in most epochs before our own to the aristocracy, 
superior station being usually linked in the world's 
exi^erience to wealth ; and it is the scions and kindred 
of those who have been actors and associates in events, 
if not the actors and associates themselves, whose 
pens describe past exploits most readily. These have 
gained the readiest access for their studies to the 
public archives, — ransacking, moreover, that private 
correspondence of illustrious leaders defunct, which 
family pride guards so jealously ; and with mingled 
urbanity and scholarship they maintain the polish of 
easy intercourse in the courtly circles of their own 
times. One ought to be a man of letters and liberal 
training for such a life, a close student, and yet, in 
some sense, a person of affairs. It costs long leisure, 
and money too, to collect materials properly, while 
the actual composition proceeds in comparison but 
slowly. Nor are the royalties from historical writ- 
ings, however successful and popular, likely to 
remunerate one greatly, considering his aggregate 
outlay; but rather than in any enhanced pecuniary 
ease, his reward must be looked for in the distin- 
guished comradeship of the dead and of the living — 
in the satisfaction that he has performed exalted labors 
faithfully for the good of his fellow-men, and found 
them in his own day fairly appreciated. Happy the 
historian, withal, whom fame or early promise has 
helped into some collateral and congenial employment 
of indirect advantage to his task. 



36 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

Calmness and constancy of purpose carry us on 
steadily in work of this character, vnih. powers of 
mind that strengthen by habitual exercise. It is not 
brilliancy of assault, it is not the pompous announce- 
ment of a narrative purpose, that determines the 
historian; but rather silent concentration and perse- 
verance. The story one begins will never be thor- 
oughly finished while the world stands ; and on the 
one hand is the temptation of preparing with too 
much elaboration or fastidiousness to narrate rapidly 
enough, and on the otlier of trying to tell more than 
the circumscribed limits of preparation and of per- 
sonal capacity will permit. Men who are free from 
financial anxieties will be tempted aside from the 
incessant laborious work by the seductions of pleasure. 
Thus Prescott, the blind historian, with excuses much 
strong-er than INIilton ever had for social ease and 
inaction, found himself compelled to overcome his 
temptations to sloth by placing himself habitually 
under penal bonds to his secretary to prepare so many 
pages by a given time. 

More, however, than the gift of time and income 
the world will scarcely look for in a literary man. 
It is the publisher, rather, who projects encyclopedias 
and huge reservoirs of useful information, and who 
embarks large money capital in the enterprise. A 
few celebrated authors, to be sure, have figured, some 
in a dormant sense, as publishers of their own works ; 
like Richardson, the English novelist, for instance, 
the Chambers brothers, and, most disastrously for 
himself. Sir Walter Scott. Many literary men of 
means own their plates, while putting firms forward 
to print and publish for them notwithstanding. 

But it is reserved, I believe, to America, and to 
the present age, to furnish to the world the first 



HISTORICAL INDUSTRIES. 37 

unique example of bookseller, book collector, histo- 
rian, and publisher, all combined in one, whose for- 
tune is devoted to the fulfilment of a colossal pioneer 
research. We must count, I apprehend, the living 
historian of " The Pacific States " among the wealthy 
benefactors of our higher learning; for that prolihc 
brood of brown volumes such as no other historian 
from Herodotus down ever fathered for his own, can 
hardly have repaid their immense cost and labor of 
preparation, even with the ultimate sale added of the 
famous library whose precious contents gave them 
substance. 

Mr. Bancroft's "Literary Industries," a stimulating 
and well-written book, recounts fully the methods he 
employed, with a corps of literary writers under his 
personal direction, in ransacking the contents of that 
huge library, since offered for sale, to furnish forth 
his own compendious treatises .upon the archaeology, 
history, and ethnology of our Pacific Coast, hitherto 
but little illustrated by its latest race of conquerors. 
And he felicitates himself that an enterprise, other- 
wise beyond any one man's power of execution, was 
brought by his own organized efforts within the com- 
pass of some thirty years. 

I will not undertake any direct criticism of such 
comprehensive methods as his, nor seek to disparage 
labors so generously and withal so successfully 
rounded out to a close. But this present age runs 
-very strongly, as it seems to me, — and perhaps too 
stTongly, — to vast executive projects in every depart- 
ment of human activity. We are apt, in consequence, 
to sacrifice high individual thought and mental crea- 
tiveness to feats of technique and organized mastery ; 
while oiir trusts, our syndicates, and combiners of 
capital seek so constantly to monopolize profits, both 



38 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

moral and material, for themselves, by welding and 
concentrating the lesser resources of individuals, that 
single endeavor faints in the unequal rivalry. Such 
a development artfully conducts the human race 
back, sooner or later, to a species of slavery ; it hands 
over the many to the patronage of the powerful few; 
and, unless checked, it must prove eventually fatal 
to the spirit of manly emulation. Just as the surf of 
property accumulation breaks fitly at each owner's 
death upon the broad bulwark of equal distribution 
among kindred, so would it be wise, I think, could 
public policy contrive by some indirection to limit in 
effect the achievements of a lifetime in every direc- 
tion to what fairly and naturally belongs to the scope 
of that single life in competition witli others ; and at 
the same time that it lets the greatest prizes go to the 
fittest, could it but encourage each member of society 
to achieve still his best. 

At all events, if you will, let huge engineering, 
let the products of organized exploit, go to increase 
the material comfort of the race; but for art, for 
scholarship, for literature and religion, for whatever 
appeals most to imagination and the moral life. I 
would keep the freest play possible to the individual 
and to individual effort. One forcible preacher 
reaches more hearts than the composite of a hundred 
preachers. And, furthermore, in gathering historical 
facts, we should remember that what may be con- 
venient for simple reference is not equally so for con- 
secutive reading. Tliere is a natural progression, 
coincident with the stream of time, in all history, all 
biography, all fiction; and to attempt to read back- 
ward, or on parallel lines, or by other arbitrary 
arrangement, produces nausea, drowsiness, and con- 
fusion of ideas. In Washington Irving's grotesque 



HISTORICAL INDUSTRIES. 39 

dream in the British Museum, the bookmakers at 
their toilsome tasks about him seemed suddenly trans- 
formed into masqueraders decking themselves out 
fantastically from the literary clothes-presses of the 
past about them. 

Co-operative history, or the alliance of various 
writers in one description of past events, is a favorite 
device of publishers in our late day, for producing 
volumes which may give each talented contributor as 
little personal exertion as possible. Of such enter- 
prises, that which assigns to each author his own 
limited period or range of events, is the best, because 
the most natural, and here it is only needful that 
each should confine his labor to his own portion, 
avoiding the dangers of comparison. Less satisfac- 
tory, because far more liable to contradiction and con- 
fusion, is that co-operative history which distributes 
topics such as the progress of science, education, 
religion, or politics, for a general and detached review, 
and, instead of any proper narrative at all, supplies a 
mass of heterogeneous essays. The latest plan of 
the kind which publishers have brought to my notice, 
is history upon an alphabetical arrangement, resem- 
bling a Gazetteer, — which proposes, of course, the 
use of scissors more than pen or brain. Mr. Hubert 
Bancroft's plan is, finally, that of a literary bureau, 
with salaried workers more or less trained, over 
whom presides the one nominal historian. 

In this nineteenth century jom may thus see his- 
torical chasms bridged, and jungles, once impene- 
trable, laid open to the sunlight. But where can 
one safely define here the limits of original author- 
ship ? At what point does the elucidation of facts 
rise above the dignity of manual labor? And how 
far, in fine, may you trust the chief executive of such 



40 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

an enterprise for liis responsible scholarship; rather 
than merely as the editor of a vast compilation, or as 
one who rubs into shape, and gives a literary gloss to 
materials of doubtful authenticity ? 

Let me address myself, then, rather to the encour- 
agement of that great majority of historical students 
and writers whose purpose is to accomplish, and to 
accomplish conscientiously, results which may fairly 
be comprehended within the space of a single and 
unaided human life. Even they who plead most 
forcibly for co-operative investigation in history 
distinctly recognize the advantage of unity in research 
and expression, and they concede that, where one 
may master his own subject seasonably enough, the 
single skilled workman is preferable to the many. 
For my own part, not meaning to boast, but to 
encourage others, I may say, that legal and historical 
works — the one kind by way of relief to the other — 
have fairly occupied me for twenty-five years, with 
considerable ground covered in their publication. 
Another worker may produce better solid books than 
I have done, but he will hardly be moved to produce 
a greater number within the same space of time, or 
to pre-empt a wider range of research. Whether it 
be from an innate distrust of hired sub-workers, or 
for economy's sake, or from the pride of resi^onsible 
authorship, or because of habits which I early formed 
in life of concentrating and warming into interest 
wherever I personally investigated, — or whether, 
indeed, from all these considerations combined, — I 
never employed literary assistance of any sort, except 
for sharing in the drudgery of index-making, for 
copying out my rough drafts in a neat hand for my 
own revision, and for transcribing passages from 
other books which I had first selected. And once 



HISTORICAL INDUSTRIES. 41 

only, when engaging my amanuensis (a very intelli- 
gent man), where historical controversy had arisen 
upon a minor point, to examine and collate the 
accounts of various old newspapers, I found, upon 
reviewing his work, that he had overlooked a single 
circumstance among these numerous descriptions, 
which was almost decisive of the issue. In fine, 
every real research, where I have published, and 
every page of composition, has been my own; and 
having regularly contracted with my publishers to 
create a book, instead of hawking about its manu- 
script when completed, and having always been per- 
mitted when ready to hand my copy to the printers, 
without submitting it to any mortal's inspection, — I 
have pursued my own bent, in shaping out the task 
as 1 had projected it. I have shown my manuscript 
to no one at all for criticism or approval ; nor have I 
received suggestions, in any volume, even as to 
literary style and expression, except upon printed 
sheets from the casual proof-reader, as the book went 
finally through the press. 

The counsel of genuine and disinterested literary 
friends, if you are fortunate enough to have them, is 
doubtless sweet and stimulating; and for the want 
of it a book will often suffer in matters of expression, 
as well as of fact. But the recompense, on the other 
side, comes after a time, in one's own confirmed skill, 
self-confidence, individuality, and the power to de- 
spatch; and often as I have reproached myself for 
little slips of language (revisiaig ajjd even altering my 
plates, u]1bn opportunity), I have seldom seen reason 
to change the record or coloring of historical events, 
and never an important deduction. 

Instead, then, of employing other persons, trained 
or untrained, to elaborate or help me out with the 



42 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

responsible task of authorship, I have sought, as the 
most trustworthy of expert assistance, where such 
aids were needful, the labors of accomplished scholars 
who had gone through the ordeal of authorship before 
me. Books and authors, in fact, I have employed for 
special investigators, and an amanuensis for amanuen- 
sis work alone. Original records and information are 
preferable to all others ; but secondary sources of 
knowledge 1 have largely accepted as a labor-saving 
means, where I could bring my own accumulated 
knowledge and habits of verification to bear upon 
them, so as to judge fairly of their comparative 
worth. 1 have not disembowelled nor re-distributed 
their contents ; but I have learned to dip into them 
for the quintessence of information they could best 
impart. To all authors, to all earlier investigators, 
1 have applied diligently whatever materials of con- 
sequence were inaccessible to them, or derived from 
my own later and more advantageous study. 

Special assistance, 1 admit, may be very valuable, 
when of an expert character. Eminent historians 
who have University pupils, eminent barristers as the 
patrons of the shy and briefless, — often employ junior 
minds, well-trained young men of poverty and ambi- 
tion, upon the drudgery of their own more affluent 
investigation. In law-suits the judge will often put 
out the analysis of complicated facts at issue to some 
member of the bar, to investigate as auditor and make 
a report which shall stand as prima facie evidence of 
the truth. INIuch the same confidence may you 
repose in the published monograph of some reputable 
historical scholar, if you desire economy of labor. 
Such assistance is trained already for your purpose, 
and one obvious advantage of employing it is, that 
you may cite the author and throw the responsibility 



HISTORICAL INDUSTRIES. 43 

of your assertion upon his shoulders. Yet, after all, 
one should be prepared to do most of his own drudg- 
ery; for nine-tenths of all the successful achieve- 
ments in life, as it has been well observed, consist in 
drudgery. Whatever subordinate or expert assist- 
ance, then, may be called in by the responsible histo- 
rian, let him always reserve the main investigation to 
himself. In no other way can he rightfully blazon 
his name upon the title-page of his book, or approach 
the true ideals of excellence and thoroughness. The 
trained assistance one employs with only a mercenary 
interest in the study accomplishes but little, after all, 
as compared with the one mind inspired for its task, 
which concentrates the best of its God-given powers 
upon precisely what it seeks, and gains in skill, 
quickness, and accuracy by constant exercise. Judg- 
ment and intuition may thus move rapidly forward 
and seize upon results. The student absorbed in his 
subject brings to bear at every step of preliminary 
study his own discrimination, analysis, and compari- 
son, qualities which he can never safely delegate; 
even in crude facts he is saved the alternative of 
accepting promiscuous heaps from journeymen at 
second-hand, or of verifying personally their labor, 
which is the worst toilsomeness of all. And it is by 
thus throwing himself into the very time of which 
he treats and becoming enveloped in its atmosphere, 
that the narrator may hope to kindle his own imagi- 
nation and grow deeply sjaupathetic with his subject. 
Fiery phrases, pictorial hints, startling details, sug- 
gestions of effect, meet here and there his quick, 
artistic eye, which a subordinate would never have 
discovered among the dull ruljbish of surrounding 
circumstances. Pen and memory learn to aid one 
another in the exploration; one needs to abstract 



44 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

nothing from the books which serve him as a basis, 
nothing indeed, anjnyhere, but what may best aid his 
immediate purpose ; the drift of long correspondence, 
speeches and documents of merely subsidiary value, 
he gathers at a glance, and a few trenchant passages 
will serve for his quotation. What self-directing 
scholar has not felt his pulse quicken and his heart 
beat high when in such close communion with the 
great actors and thinkers of the past, or as he reads 
contemporary reports of the event, and lives transac- 
tions over again amid their original surroundings? 
And, if in such personal exploits among the buried 
cities, new pregnant facts, new points of view are 
revealed corrective of prevailing misconceptions; if 
some sudden insight into motives, public or personal, 
lights up his lonely induction, — how does the soul 
dilate with that greatest of all the triumphs of research, 
— the triumph of discovery. 

Nor let it be said, as an objection to such expendi- 
ture of time, that an economizing historian ought to 
reserve liis best strength for the loftier task of arrange- 
ment and final composition. Let us not turn literary 
skill to meretricious uses ; let us beware how we steer 
blindly among conflicting statements, or accept for 
facts what only our paid j)upils have collected. Due 
preparation is no less essential to the historian than 
the art of telling his story; for he has never of right 
the free range of his imagination. There should be 
a time to study, and a time to compose ; the one task 
should aid and alternate with the other. Nothing, I 
ani sure, so relieves a laborious literary life as to 
diversify its pursuits, — to change the subject or the 
mode of occupation. And in historical literature, if 
we would save ourselves the excessive strain which 
soon exhausts, let us turn the pen which has been 



HISTORICAL INDUSTRIES. 45 

vigorously employed for a sufficient time upon the 
narrative to prosaic annotation and abstracts. Let 
us leave the recital of results for one chapter or 
volume, to gather material and study for the next. 
We need not fear to roam the broad fields of investi- 
gation over, if we hold fixedly to our purpose. The 
bee culls sweetness from the flower cups, before 
treading out the honey. And the indolence which 
every investigator should chiefly guard against is that 
of subsiding into the intellectual pleasure of filling 
and refilling his mental pouch for his own delecta- 
tion, while never setting himself to manufacture that 
others may derive a profit. 

As a most important means of economizing time 
and personal labor, we should fix clearly in advance 
the general scope and direction we mean to pursue, 
and then adhere to it, limiting the range of investi- 
gation accordingly. Authorship in history requires 
resolution, and an intelligent purpose besides in the 
development of the original plan throughout its entire 
length and breadth. For as the area of mental 
research is of itself boundless, the individual should 
fence off for himself onl}^ a certain portion. Chance 
and opportunity may unquestionably lead us on from 
one task of exploration to another. We may, like 
Gibbon, carry our work purposely to a given point, 
and then leave a still further advance to depend 
upon health and favoring circumstances. Or, as 
Prescott, Motley, and Parkman have done, we may 
let one dramatic episode, when fairly compassed 
and set forth, conduct to another and kindred one, 
so as eventually to group out the life's occupation, 
whether longer or shorter, into one s^nnmetrical 
whole. But to attack mountains of huge material 
blindly, without a just estimate of life and physical 



46 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

capabilities, can bring only despair and premature 
exhaustion. 

It is not strange at all, if, after announcing and 
planning a work of so many pages or volumes, you 
find the burden of materials increasing on your 
hands ; but you are a novice in book architecture, if, 
nevertheless, you cannot build according to the 
plan ; and you are certainly the worst of blunderers, 
if you throw the superabundant materials blindly into 
form, as they come, and still strive to erect by con- 
tract, as a cottage, what should have been only 
undertaken for a castle. In all literary workmanshij), 
or at least in historical, there should be specifications, 
and the specifications should correspond with the 
plan; the rule and compasses should be applied so as 
to give due proportion to every part of the work. 
In the lesser details one must be prepared to com- 
press, to sacrifice, to omit, and no reader will miss 
what is judiciously left out as does the author 
himself. 

By thus keeping T\dthin one's intended space, as 
carefully mapped out in advance, — and I would 
advise every projector of a book to get practical sug- 
gestions from his pul^lisher, and then clearly settle as 
to size and subject before he tackles to the task, — • 
by thus doing we circumscribe at once the field of 
investigation; and by apprehending well that in 
which we mean to be impressive or original, by con- 
ceiving fitly our main purpose in authorship, we are 
prepared to apply ourselves to the real service of our 
age. Some wi^iters set their minds to work upon 
manuals, upon the abridgment of what they find at 
hand for a certain period and country, some upon 
amplifpng; but no one should undertake to narrate 
history with the same fulness as one who has told the 



HISTORICAL INDUSTBIES. 47 

tale before, unless lie is confident that lie can truth- 
fully put the facts in a new light, or add something 
really valuable which has not been already set 
forth elsewhere. 

Let it be admitted, in fine, in all historical writing, 
that much patient and minute study must be bestowed 
for one's own personal gratification alone; that one 
may spread the result before his readers, but not the 
processes. Whatever the historian may print and 
publish for the edification of the public, let him 
endeavor to make the result apparent for which he 
]3rospected ; let him tell the tale, unfold the particu- 
lars, and inculcate the lesson with the pertinence and 
force which best befit the character of his undertak- 
ing; and let him show his essential excellence pre- 
cisely where the public has the most right to expect 
and desire it. 



HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS. 

Some of my friends think that I do scant justice to 
co-operative methods of historical work. Perhaps 
they have misapprehended my meaning. The main 
object of my former essay ^ was to oppose to all 
boasted advantages of new and monopolizing plans of 
literary labor — of capitalized scholarship, if I may 
be allowed such expression — the immense synthetic 
power of which the single trained and healthy scholar 
is capable who pursues his own consistent course of 
literary production with diligence and constancy. 
To a generation intent upon vast undertakings, and 
in all departments of industry setting so much store 
by organized co-operation and so little by individual 
achievement, I have dared to plead something for 
the individual. The illustrations of what an average 
life, rightly and systematically conducted, may accom- 
plish with the pen, are, indeed, easily multiplied. 
Inventive writers stand necessarily apart ; and where 
invention and learning happily combine, the accumu- 
lated written expression of a single human brain may 
prove prodigious. Bring together, if you will, the 
manuscripts of some illustrious preacher, journalist, 
public officer, or business director, accumulated in 
chronological mass at his decease, and the prolific 
results are amazing. 

1 See preceding paper. 



HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS. 49 

In the realm of intellectual thought and study, 
what achievement worthy of a lifetime should be 
thought impossible, if we regard fairly, as individuals, 
our average limitation ; if we curb the desire of selfish 
aggrandizement, content to begin where others have 
left off, and to end where others still may follow? 
As for the individual task well in hand, one accom- 
plishment leads to another, and the lesser develop- 
ment opens to view the greater. Habit and experience 
smooth out the earlier difficulties, and by a little arith- 
metic despondency may be corrected. For that which 
looms up so formidable prospectively to the imagina- 
tion is readily built when you figure out that just so 
much labor and so much progress from day to day 
for a given number of years will bring you to the 
finish. 

But I am far from meaning to disparage those 
wider possibilities of literary usefulness which the 
emploj-ment of co-operative or subordinate labor may 
afford. Especiall}^ valuable must be such labor in 
the collection and classified array of solid facts. The 
more concrete and simple those facts and the clearer 
the general scope of the unified undertaking the 
better can the task be apportioned. For some com- 
prehensive dictionary, cyclopedia, or catalogue, for 
instance, combined labor is essential; nor is a news- 
paper or magazine otherwise made readable, where 
the popular taste demands selection and variety. A 
labor-saving contrivance is needed in the one instance ; 
in the other a feast for various appetites. But for 
history or biography, and where facts themselves are 
found complex and scientific deduction inappropriate, 
— and where, too, characterization, consistent sum- 
mary, and social application must find a place, — the 
reader's continuous interest can only be engaged by 

4 



50 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

the closest unity of design. And so, too, should it 
be said, wherever any one tells a story. Co-ordinate 
work finds here a closer en\ironment, and if not laid 
off by eras or spaces of narration can scarcely be laid 
off well at all. In poetry and fiction you are content 
with the product of one creator; one ^i\'id mind 
illuminates and instructs. ^NlidAvay, it seems to me, 
between the collector of facts and the imaginative 
writer stands tlie historian; like the prophet in the 
valley of dry bones who gathers the fragments of 
dead men together and makes them live again. His 
mental equipment is not complete if he is a collector 
alone, nor if he is a narrator alone. The molten 
mass should flow from his own heated crucible into 
the moidds he makes for it. 

To waive for a moment the question of co-ordi- 
nate aid, a capable historian may and ought to 
know how to use much subordinate assistance to 
advantage. There is the drudgery of the amanuen- 
sis, of the secretary, of our modern type-writer, of 
copinng out compositions for the press, and of re^^is- 
ing proofs. Passages which the responsible author 
has marked in other books may be thus drawn off ; 
parallel statements collated, citations -v^Titten out. 
So, too, under one's judicious super%-ision, reference 
lists or an index may be compiled, statistics tabulated, 
and explorations made into newspapers and bulky 
public documents for special statements, facts simple 
in themselves or readily verified, which laborious 
search can alone reveal. After considerable experi- 
ence one may train this clerical subordinate into an 
intelKgent hunter for special material, or teach him 
to make good briefs and abstracts, and in various 
ways save wearisome details to his employer. But 
the scenting of the game is one thing and bringing 



HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS. 51 

down and bagging it is quite another. All such 
secondary assistance — for I speak not yet of scholars 
and experts competent to co-operate — must be of 
moderate scope, and a proper training takes time. 
The mind that can appropriate and apply such labors 
must have wrought out its OA\ai broad experience, 
and carried constantly its consecutive plans. Like 
senior counsel in a case, like the Attorney-Gen- 
eral with a "de^dl," or the judge whose logical 
processes are aided by the precedents which some 
secretary has arranged for his inspection, our present 
investigator, knowing better than to estimate the 
weight of authorities by the weight of books, applies 
his own sense and discrimination to all testimony 
thus brought before 'him, making sure that it has 
been sought in the right quarters and rightly gathered. 
His own mind has been trained to conduct dry inves- 
tigation and connect results by quicker divination 
than any subordinate can apply for him. 

But now to speak of historical monographs, — a 
species of publication to which I have repeatedly 
alluded, and never without respect and commendation. 
Here we have treatises to consult which have been 
thought worth printing, and for whose accuracy in 
each instance some trained scholar vouches over his 
personal signature. Such studies deserve more cre- 
dence than the gathered pile of some unknown clerk 
whose chief aim in life may have been to earn his 
daily pittance. For the monograph, be it brief or 
extended, purports to supply the results of an expert 
investigation into some recondite topic ; and its credi- 
bility acquires weight from the circumstance that the 
person who prepared it was one of our own craft, of 
liberal attainments, who worked presumably under 
the strongest inducement to be accurate. He seeks 



52 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

scholarly reputation; and the higher his reputation 
already, the more confidence, if he be unbiassed, do 
we incline to give him. Special investigations of tliis 
kind, for which there is always an ample field in the 
study of social institutions, I have elsewhere likened 
to that of an auditor or master of chancery, in legal 
practice, whom a court will appoint for its own con- 
venience, to take testimony on complicated details of 
fact and submit his report. This auditor or master 
is no common citizen, di'afted into the service casually 
as men are drawn for a jury, but an honored member 
of the bar worthy in that particular case to have sat 
upon the bench or served as counsel. Nor, with even 
such high assurance of his capacity and fidelity, is his 
report (which is a sort of monograph) taken for 
more than it is worth. It is 'prima facie, evidence of 
conclusions on a particular branch of the case and no 
more. The tribunal has still to survey the ampler 
field of controversy, and finally to adjudicate upon 
the general merits of the whole cause where this 
investigation may have disposed of a particular. 

I hail the auspicious efforts of those higher Uni- 
versity instructors who are busily training young men 
of the present generation to become experts and co- 
laborers in the grand universal study of the past ; who 
organize and send forth new exploring expeditions 
to those hidden sources of human history where rich 
treasures of fact have long lain buried. And as a 
marked triumph of such new instruction the de- 
cision of our Federal Supreme Court, last year, in 
the income tax case, serves for illustration, where, by 
the virtual admission of its grave majority, a reversal 
of past precedents was due, most of all to an exhaust- 
ive historical presentation, for the first time, of those 
essential conditions under which the State resoui'ces 



HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS. 53 

of taxation, at first exclusive, were bestowed in 
1787-89 upon the new and more perfect Union. ^ 

Why American scholarship has done little in its 
earlier growth, for such leacUng investigations, is 
obvious. Americans, until thirty years ago, had but 
little leisure or money to waste upon books and 
pursuits unremunerative in cash. A liberal college 
education went almost exclusively to the mental 
equipment of young men for one of the three grand 
professions or for mercantile pursuits. General 
graduate studies were not encouraged in this country 
to any great extent. Hence history was taught at 
our higher institutions, not to train men to habits of 
individual research, but rather so as to memorize 
past events and hang great examples round the cham- 
bers of the mind on the pegs of chronology. As for 
historical productions, moreover, whatever literary 
market might exist was confined to the narratives of 
heroic prowess or text-book abridgments for the com- 
mon schools. Monographs, in such an age, if pre- 
pared at all, were but the chance diversion of men 
otherwise actively employed, or the orator's staple 
for an occasional address. Patriotism or family pride 
might be stirred on some choice anniversary, but the 
college educator gave no great impulse to solid study 
in the historical direction nor to a combination of 
critical results. We had two or three grand histo- 
rians, but they were stranded men of ample fortune. 
Even learned societies found not readily their mission 
in those days. How often, still, does that brief 
epitome of ephemeral facts, prepared like a school- 
boy's composition, serve as the prelude to some 
general chat or a more solid hot supi^er! In the 

1 Pollock V. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 158 U. S. 601 (May, 1895J; 
Chief Justice Fuller's opiuiou. 



54 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

publication of monographs, or better still, in a syste- 
matic effort to collect and print rare letters and 
manuscripts, a growing field has been found for 
associations which bring congenial men together in 
State or local organization, whose hobby otherwise 
is genealogical lore, or the biography of deceased 
members. And more useful still for future promise, 
is that systematic training of critical investigators 
which our highest Universities are of late developing. 
It was the Johns Hopkins University, scarce twenty 
years old, which first adapted the Heidelberg his- 
torical methods to American use under its munificent 
endowment; and now, with splendid equipments of 
their own, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and other 
leading institutions of the land extend like facilities 
for post-graduate instruction. 

Under such admirable education a race of native 
investigators, I trust, is growing up, w^hose enthusi- 
asm, if not rewarded as it deserves, with the highest 
trusts of political office, will yet impress upon our 
local communities convincingly how public affairs 
ought to be administered. They will strengthen the 
cause of good government on the people's side and 
rule at the polls by disseminating correct ideas and 
information. Their combined research will be directed 
to comparative facts which illustrate domestic, busi- 
ness, and social manners and customs, legal and 
political institutions. For the Freeman apothegm ^ 
— though perhaps embodying the truth without the 
whole truth — opens regular search in the right 
direction. 

As a further result of this new systematic training, 
we may look for a better classification, a more thor- 
ough gathering of archives and private papers which 
1 " History is past politics ; politics is present history." 



HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS. 55 

evidence great events. The indexing of documents 
in our American State Department is a step taken in 
the right direction ; and wortliy of all commendation 
is the fresh editorial work which has lately begun 
upon the hoarded correspondence of our earliest 
Presidents. To turn on the fullest light becomes the 
prevalent historic disposition and the true one, avoid- 
ing, nevertheless, as we ought, the scandalous inva- 
sion of private life and of matters unessential to 
public and popular development. Our American 
Congress has made its own noble benefaction to 
history by throA^dng open for universal inspection the 
whole record of our late Civil War, Union and Con- 
federate, in the nation's possession, — a monument 
in multiplied print, unparalleled probably in the 
world's exj)erience, to the modern power of public 
opinion. Scholars have in this voluminous testimony 
the right materials upon which to base a military 
narrative of events while yet the public judgment is 
impressible ; and the danger once imminent that the 
battles and leaders of the Civil War would be re- 
created from the false, contradictory, and slipshod 
statements of casual survivors has been averted as it 
ought to be. For — let alone the differing bias of 
the concurrent and the retrospect, the personal dispo- 
sition to shift and justify where circumstances have 
changed and one's cause was lost, the boastful swell 
that the swaggerer takes on when rivals and cross- 
examiners are dead — a sufficient warning against 
implicit reliance on such testimony may be found in 
the honest lapses of memory alone. On this point 
let me mention my own experience. My part in the 
Civil War was humble enough, but my disposition 
to recite what I had seen as honest as any man's. 
Details of the picture which youthful memory engraved 



o6 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

gradually on my mind were materially changed, when 
a diary which I had carried on my person through a 
whole campaign disappeared from among my papers 
and turned up again for inspection some twenty years 
later. For no testimony so surely and so often 
confounds the subsequent tale of the same witness 
as his contemporaneous. 

A needful stimulus has been given to the produc- 
tion of monographs by the increased means of placing 
them generously before the public. Formerly a rich 
man only, or a few interested subscribers, Avould bear 
the cost of printing; for publishers saw no profit in 
such essays, and see none still, while the periodicals 
admitted them but rarely. But latterly our learned 
societies have furnished printed collections of their 
own, and still more recently our foremost Universi- 
ties. The American Historical Association and the 
American Historical Review are among the latest 
hopeful agencies in this useful direction, and with 
especial reference to national exploration. Two 
things seem highly desirable for the widest usefulness 
of such critical and co-operative labors : one, that the 
collection of our monographs be intelligently directed 
to the most obvious wants of the age; another, that 
a reference index, well classified and arranged, and 
kept up to date, shall direct the consulting scholar 
for any topic or period to such monograph literature 
as may assist his search for information. 

Yet, after all, however valuable the writing of 
monographs may become, however essential to the 
elucidation of historical truth in the by-places, we 
should not overestimate its practical importance, 
nor, as it seems to me, expect such essays to supplant 
that more comprehensive survey and description of 
the past which historians have hitherto considered 



HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS. 57 

their natural task. For the writer of a historical 
monograph is the historian in his worksho]3, or, if we 
prefer, the historian's own skilled assistant, whose 
product must enter into the tissues of his own task 
like all other nutritious substances. Often is the 
conductor of a comprehensive narrative led into these 
recondite channels or feeders which he pursues at 
leisure and describes in monographs of his own. I 
still recall the analogy of that complicated suit in 
chancery which one directing tribunal expects to 
work to final results notwithstanding the incidental 
issues of fact which may have been put out for a 
finding. There is no royal road to capacious learn- 
ing, still less to capacious wisdom. Monographs 
serve the special effort, just like a magazine article. 
The writer of a monograph may elaborate farther. 
Many monographs may make a narrative of events; 
but not unless they are consecutive, in just accordance 
with a master-plan, and with the thread held fast by 
a master. The more persistent and systematic our 
exploit into realities, the broader becomes the range 
of our knowledge and experience, and the better is 
one qualified to write of human life, past or present, 
in its amplest relation. Specialized investigation, 
taken by itself, is like boring for a well, and the 
deeper we dig the closer we find our environment; 
we may reach a new water-spring far below, but the 
starry sky al)0ve us is but a small disk in sight, while 
the topography of the earth's vast surface about our 
entrance-place has vanished. Some ampler surveyor, 
some intelligence more comprehensive, must direct 
these literary divers, or at least apply what they have 
dipped out in discreet combination. The hidden 
treasures brought thus to light must be coined into 
money and made to circulate. Culture finds little 



58 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

to attract, little artistic delight, in a bare wilderness 
perforated with the pickaxe. Who is this director 
of research, this medium for moral lessons, this 
guide of posterity, but the true historian, whose own 
wide range of philosophy and study entitles him to 
the confidence of the public? From the literary 
standpoint alone we find that the books describing 
liuman life and in^v ntion which influence us the 
most, which are the most readable, are, on the whole, 
of individual fruition and not co-operative ; for though 
each vivacious intellect that finds admirers will find 
censors as well, the public seeks still, as it has al- 
ways sought, its prime inspiration from single minds 
of a superior cast capable of much continuity and 
impressive presentation. This you cannot look for 
in works where different writers, differently brought 
up, and with a different growth of ideas, strive to 
give you their composite thought. A dictionary or 
gazetteer for ready reference may be thus constructed, 
but not a narrative. Different eras for treatment 
may of course be apportioned among different narra- 
tors ; for this is merely to subdivide, and the story or 
history ' remains what it always was, an unfinished 
tale. Concrete facts, in a word, bottom facts, are 
not enough to make books readable ; there must be 
a dignified marshalling of matter, pictorial grouping, 
effective massing, vivid characterization and descrip- 
tion, a sound political and social philosophy. 

In preparing materials for any extensive exposition 
of history one should first draw up carefully a rough 
sketch of the main epochs or topics to be embraced. 
It is well, I think, to keep some handy blank-book 
for such a sketch ; and in preparing the classified plan 
to mark each running chapter or subdivision which 
one proposes to occupy by some arbitrary sign, such 



HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS. 59 

as a letter of the alphabet. This same blank-book 
may also contain a list of the anthorities which the 
writer has examined or means to examine under each 
topic. Slips, note-sheets, and large paper, distin- 
guished each in an upper corner by the arbitrary sign 
of its topic, such as I have suggested, can then be 
used, as convenience may serve, for the notes, cita- 
tions or abstracts, adduced in the course> of one's pre- 
paratory study ; and by large envelopes for the slips, 
rubber bands or pins to connect the sheets, and pack- 
ages or portfolios to keep these alphabetical topics 
apart, an author's amplest materials become easily 
arranged for special review and comparison when 
active composition begms. As for secondary narra- 
tives fit for basing one's own story upon, a rapid 
worker may, by keeping several such books open 
before him at parallel pages, comjDose as he writes, 
and so economize his time and labo^.. Where your 
materials first collected have since been condensed 
and digested, and one draft of composition follows 
another, writing paper of different color or quality 
may serve to distinguish the revised from the unre- 
vised portion. At all events, one should before com- 
posing make careful plans for his book and fix upon 
a rough outline, however much he may change the 
plan in details as his book progresses; for brain-work 
systematically applied is indispensable to all long- 
sustained productive effort. 



HISTORICAL TESTIMONY. 

Our common law, wliieh is not given to flattery, 
pays a delicate compliment to writei-s of liistoi}-, in 
permitting their works to be cited in court with 
something of the autlienticits* of official documents. 
This privilege, which books of art and science have 
not yet attained, and books of speculation never can, 
should confu-m us in the conviction that the truth 
of history is above everything else what historians 
should strive after; that the accurate and diligent 
presentation of past events, of past public facts, of 
past manners and customs, must constitute after all 
the basis of their permanent reno\\'n and usefidness. 
Opinions change from age to age ; but facts well 
interpreted once are interpreted forever. Hence the 
deductions, the moral lessons of history, one should 
hold subordinate to a candid, conscientious, and cour- 
ageous exploration for the truth and the whole truth ; 
all hypotheses should be kept under curb : the -^Titer's 
imagination ought to be like that of a painter whose 
model is kept before his eyes. "V\'e should not seek 
unduly to stir the passions of our readers, nor to color 
artfidly for effect ; it is enough if we can interest and 
gain their spnpathy. Fancy, theorizing, false ideals, 
and false inferences have no place in such sober 
efforts ; conjecture should not supplement study, nor 

Eead before the American Historical Association, at Washington, 
December 27, 1S95. 



HISTORICAL TESTIMONY. 61 

ought the fagots of study to be piled, as fuel for that 
ignis fatuus., the philosophy of history. For the realm 
of the historian is the actual, and his art should be to 
reproduce life's panorama. 

Not only, then, does eveiy historical writer who 
goes into print owe it to the public to be as accurate 
as possible from the commencement, but errors or 
omissions of fact and misleading deductions which he 
afterwards discovers should be promptly and heroic- 
ally corrected. He cannot afford to set up for a 
guide, and remain to the end a false one. That 
which he has once published ought to be published 
under his tacit pledge to make afterwards all needful 
correction ; and he may fairly ask to be judged by his 
work only as he finally leaves it. There should be 
vision and revision. Not a single monograph which 
clears up minor particulars, where he had not per- 
sonally searched, should be wasted upon his notice ; 
not a criticism by one competent to correct, however 
harshly and unfeelingly expressed. It is better, of 
course, to be wholly right at first; but that is not 
easy. Knowledge which in a measure we must all of 
us gain at second-hand cannot be infallible j and the 
best we may promise is, to purpose right and maintain 
that purpose. So positive is it, as Cicero has elo- 
quently stated the maxim, that each historian should 
dare to say whatever is true and fear to record a 
falsehood. 

Nor can we, I think, pay the common law a better 
compliment in return for its flattering confidence, 
than to adapt to our o^^ti use for investigation some 
of its familiar rules and methods for the right elicit- 
ing of truth from testimon3\ Historical scholars are 
investigators ; and they should be trained to investi- 
gate, — to weigh and measure together the authori- 



62 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

ties, and not merely to collate and cite them. We 
relax, of course, as we must, that rigid distrust which 
the old common law showed in excluding from the 
witness-stand all interested parties. We adopt that 
better rule of modern tribunals which hears all testi- 
mony founded upon direct knowledge of the matter 
at issue, applying a strict scrutiny, however, and a 
searching cross-examination to each individual wit- 
ness. We ask his means of knowledge, his character 
for truth and veracity, the bias or prejudice under 
which he testifies. We reconcile contradictions, bal- 
ance probabilities, consider presumptions and the 
burden of proof, compare and adjudicate. What is 
deliberately written down we prefer for exactness to 
the oral ; primary authorities to secondary ; what one 
admits against himself to what it suits him to declare ; 
testimony solemnly given under oath, or upon the 
death-bed, to the careless and casual utterances of every- 
day life ; that which is corroborated to that which is 
unsupported or denied ; the probable to the improbable. 
Whatever one says when the event is recent, we trust 
sooner than that which he says far subsequent, in 
reliance upon a too treacherous memory ; and for 
ourselves we choose, wherever we may apply it, the 
observation of our own immediate senses to that 
hearsay, upon which, in spite of himself, each investi- 
gator of the past, each historian or chronicler, must 
so greatly rest. 

The scholarship, then, and the reputed honesty of 
every writer whose works we are to study, become of 
prime consequence in judging of his credibility ; and 
so, too, though perhaps in a less degree, the conscious 
or unconscious bias under which he wrote. Patriot- 
ism itself gives to each loyal citizen a bias or preju- 
dicial direction; and this is sure to affect historical 



HISTORICAL TESTIMONY. 63 

narrative, since one does not easily separate his task 
from the lesson he has in view. This bias becomes 
very strong where one's country or State was a bel- 
hgerent, or his immediate fellow-citizens engaged in 
civil war. The prepossessions of religion and politics 
have also an immense influence. You do not expect 
a Macaulay to do entire justice to Tories, nor an 
Alison to Frenchmen, nor a Lingard to Protestants 
and the English Reformation, nor a Gibbon to the 
Christian religion. Our American school histories 
glorify without stint the heroes of 1776 and the 
American Revolution • over the causes and course 
of our latest civil strife they become politic enough. 
What American youth, however, is trained to apolo- 
gize for the King and Parliament that strove patrioti- 
cally to maintain the integrity of British dominion, 
or to do honor to our colonial loyalists who remained 
loyal ? One of the most valuable contributions to 
American history, of recent years, embraces a narra- 
tive of the Mexican War as the Mexicans wrote it. 
Will the time ever come, in the advance of race edu- 
cation, when the negro or the red man may compose 
a history of this continent and its civilization from 
the standpoint of his o^vn race experience? 

Impartial treatment, and the effort to deal fairly by 
all races and all nations and all men, are qualities 
praiseworthy in any -writer ; yet we must confess that 
a cold and colorless narration fails of effect, and that 
each one of us dearly desires the applause of his own 
countrymen and constituency. There are special risks 
to be run, therefore, when writing of times and conten- 
tions which have not yet cooled down and solidified, so 
to speak ; and here is it that they have the advantage 
as narrators, who, like the British Gibbon and Arnold, 
and perhaps our own Prescott and Motley, devote 



64 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

their literary skill and scholarship) to describing some 
period of the distant past, and to countries and civili- 
zations only remotely connected with their own. Or 
if, like Freeman of the one country and Parkman of 
the other, or like Guizot of France and the great in- 
vestigators of modern Germany, they search into the 
institutions of their own native land, they stake out 
some period for their toil far enough back to admit of 
a passionless perspective. And yet, after all, the vivid 
portrayers of their own times and countries have 
hitherto enjoyed the surest posthumous confidence, 
es^^ecially when, like Herodotus, Thucydides, Xeno- 
phon, or Ctesar, the writer describes scenes and 
events of which he has personally partaken. 

In biography, again, where history is seen teaching 
by example, we find an obvious bias of the writer to 
ascribe all the influence possible to the hero of his 
tale, — to make him, if he can, the radiator of events, 
the centre and sun of the system, round which all 
other luminaries of his age revolved. The official 
biographer, more especially, to whom family papers 
are confided, is apt to be one of the family seeking to 
keep up the ancestral renown, or some family friend 
trusted for the pious duty ; and hence the laudatory 
strain, the panegyric, the effort to revivify the dead 
man's friends and to slay his slain, that we not un- 
frequently witness in such narratives, with amiable 
emotion, but withal a little sceptical. More candor, 
certainly, we look for in a family biography than in 
an epitaph or a funeral oration ; but we should be 
disappointed enough not to find from such a biogra- 
pher the strongest defence of his hero, as to all con- 
troverted points of his career where public opinion 
had been in suspense or misinformed ; and we should 
expect, moreover, a fair peep into the private port- 



HISTORICAL TESTIMONY. 65 

folio for family letters and confidences, which histoiy 
would feel free to appropriate in its own way as its 
own authentic material, regardless of the family in- 
junction. All filial prepossessions, all that personal 
partiality which close intimacy exacts as its tribute, 
let us treat with reverence, provided we are left to 
estimate for ourselves and to supply the corrective 
that justice to others may demand. For my part, I 
do not envy the man who is too callous to become 
intimate at all ; who can explore a kindred human 
heart as though he held a surgical instrument in his 
hand; who can enter the recesses of a noble soul, 
whatever its human shortcomings, without one throb 
of emotion. Love, compassion, need not, of course, 
be that emotion in every instance ; there is the 
earnestness of sympath}^ in one biographer, and the 
earnestness of antipathy in another. Let us, however, 
have earnestness ; for the writer, historian, or biog- 
rapher to be most distrusted, is he, in my opinion, 
who gains no earnestness at all from his subject, but 
remains wholly neutral, negative, and external, — 
critical, quizzical, or cjaiical, as the mood may move 
him, — or extending the arm of judicial patronage, 
like some self-chosen Rhadamanthus who practises 
before the looking-glass. 

There is still another bias to which all literary 
authorship is peculiarly liable, now that our great 
purchasing public supplants the influential patron to 
whom a book was formerly dedicated. I mean that 
of pampering, for the sake of immediate circulation 
and profit, instead of writing out what one thinks at 
heart, and supplying to those who seek knowledge 
the strong meat of correct information. So immense 
has become the power of fiction in the community of 
late, that facts themselves are too readily accepted 

5 



66 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

with a fictitious embellishment ; and readers, even of 
the more solid books, will, many of them, ask chiefly 
to be amused or excited, and not to have their own 
complacency disturbed. Publishers often seek what 
is i)opular, what will sell readiest and coin money; 
and their mercenary estimates may distort the views 
of an author, so as to hinder him from remaining 
constant to his best ideals, God forbid that an 
author should not make himself interesting if he can, 
or write books that are salable ; but the higher grade 
of scholarship will refuse to suppress or misrepresent 
for the sake of popularity, or to make tlie unripe 
fruits of study look tempting by applying the high 
polish of a brilliant style. He will not degenerate 
from historian into a goss>ip, nor like a gossip shift his 
views of men and measures to suit his trivialities. 

Here let us distinguish, as the law of evidence bids 
us, between the two great classes of authorities offered 
in testimony, — the primary and the secondary. No 
one should investigate into historical facts, without this 
fundamental distinction well borne in mind. Under 
primar}^ authorities we comprehend, of course, all 
public records and documents, official reports, every 
original source of information ; and we may fairly 
refer to the same head for ourselves the private and 
contemporaneous statements and correspondence of 
those who were actors or eye-witnesses in the events 
or experiences which they describe ; and, furthermore, 
though "\vith cautious reserve, reports of the contem- 
porary press, from contemporary observation. Sec- 
ondary as to classification, and quite subordinate and 
subsidiary to all this, let us reckon newspaper com- 
ment and generalization, and the literary remnants, 
materials, and memoranda of those Avho simply relate 
what others have told them. All such materials are 



HISTORICAL TESTIMONY. 67 

but secondary; and so, necessarily, are those other 
narratives, however trustworthy, which we are com- 
pelled to consult, more or less, under an}'^ circum- 
stances, because primary evidence is not accessible, 
or our own power and opportunity for research are 
limited. 

Works of travel afford much coloring matter for 
histoiy ; but only so far as the traveller tells what 
he saw with his own eyes. The very book we toil 
upon with pains and put forth, Avhatever our own 
primary sources of information, becomes but second- 
ary proof to our readers, so far as we have not stated 
facts as eye-witnesses. Hence, in historical studies, 
you may separate quotations from the context for 
trustworthy matter, or accord to the same writer more 
credence in one connection than in another. Quota- 
tions may be verified ; and with the help of citations 
we may go over the whole original ground for our- 
selves, though we are not likely to do so. Writers 
themselves like to be trusted ; they cannot turn the 
processes of their own investigation inside out, nor 
display to the reader all the testimony which the res 
gestce afforded them. Time enters into the essence of 
all human labor ; and one would hardly be a laborer 
himself if he did not hope to save labor to others. 

Primary evidence, then, under some such classifica- 
tion as I have endeavored to indicate, should in all 
cases be preferred by the investigator to secondary, 
wherever available ; for in spite of what literary indo- 
lence may claim to the contrary, you gain thus not 
only greater moral satisfaction, but often an economy 
of time besides. You are saved a comparison of col- 
lateral statements with the added danger of restating 
errors. Fill your pitcher at the fountain-head and 
you need not scoop and scrape further down among a 



68 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

hundred rills. Seek original records, original reports, 
original letters, original documents, or the authentic 
publication of them, — not content with mere extracts 
or abstracts which others have made, — and you will 
be often surprised to iind how some suggestive phrase 
or turn of expression, which did not attiact the writer 
who I'ead the whole instrument before you, — since 
his standpoint was a different one, — will flash out 
from the dull verbiage with a new and forcible appli- 
cation. For the standpoint of the j^resent does not 
coincide with that of former times, nor does the array 
of facts that immediately interests, or the desired 
application of past experience to present action, cease 
to vary with varying eras. How different must be 
the method of historical research among primary 
documents which illustrate our present annals from 
those of earlier centuries ! Far behind us lie the 
chronicles, the musty archives, the rare manuscripts 
of those feudal governments which flourished when 
printing was unknown and literary appliances were 
rude. We live in the parting radiance of a great 
century of popular development, looking towards 
the horizon of a new, and, as we hope, a greater one. 
Government, once conducted in secret councils, now 
pursues its routine out-of-doors, observed of all men, 
until the official evidence of the times becomes an 
overwhelming mass. Public documents are iirinted, 
multiplied, scattered broadcast from the press, so that 
you may burn or make pulp of the share which falls 
to your own use, and yet leave copies behind in 
superabundance for the information of posterity. 
Current literature, current journalism, current read- 
ing matter, good and bad, swell the stores elsewhere 
accumulating for that ideal personage, the future 
historian ; besides those official publications. State and 



HISTORICAL TESTIMONY. 69 

national, executive, legislative, and judicial, which 
overflow the huge public basins built to hold them. 
On yonder hill ^ legislation, one department of gov- 
ernment alone, has stretched far its marble wings 
northward and southward, and at length added great 
catacombs down deep underneath the foundation 
walls of its temple, to hold the buried treasures of 
Congressional committee-rooms. There rest in a 
common tomb the corpses of bills safely delivered 
and of bills still-born, shrouded petitions, and the 
reports upon petitions ; this immense mass displaying 
for posterity's information the whole embryo process 
of legislation, — all the minutire, in short, that politi- 
cal science might ever wish hereafter to exhume, 
except, indeed, the mysterious lobbying and log-roll- 
ing that may have so often influenced their delicate 
creation. To historically reconstruct the earlier cen- 
turies, it might be enough to compare the meagre 
secondary authorities extant, or through official favor 
gain access to lean archives mysteriously locked ; but 
to reconstruct this nineteenth century you must 
thrash out the golden grains from storehouses already 
crammed with chaff, whose doors stand open. 

Besides that keenly discriminating scent for the 
useful among old rubbish, our future historian will 
need, like us earlier brethren of the craft, habits of 
careful comparison as to whatever materials, whatever 
evidence, he admits into his case, — not mingling 
primary and secondary proof indiscriminately, as 
though of equal value ; not taking any witness upon 
his ipse dixit., apart from his means of knowledge, his 
probable bias, and his general worthiness of credence ; 
not deciding issues by numerical count of the authori- 
ties, like that old Dutch judge who summed up in 

1 Capitol Hill, "Washington, D. C, where this paper was read. 



70 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

favor of the litigant producing the greater number 
of persons on the stand; not interpreting a great 
constitutional document, as some would interpret 
Shakespeare, so as to make it the text of their 
own fanciful inspiration; but reading all authors, 
all testimony, in the light of the age in which they 
existed, and illuminating the whole pathway of 
past events with the fullest lustre of surrounding- 
circumstances. 

Furthermore, on weighing and determining where 
witnesses contradict, as they often must, and the 
truth of events is not clear, our scholar will consider 
the presumptions proper in each case ; he will not 
reject that which has passed into established belief, 
for the sake of novel and ingenious estimates, without 
putting the burden of proof where it belongs, and 
taking the new proof for simply what it is worth. 
Nor will he disdain that popular verdict, always 
deliberately and upon good evidence rendered, and 
always presumptively correct, though liable of course 
to final reversal, which is known as the judgment of 
history. Some important element in the formation 
of a country's earlier civilization, or some individual 
influence, may have been overlooked or too lightly 
regarded, in posterity's estimate ; happy, then, is the 
historical scholar who can produce new testimony, 
and set opinion right; but he asks more than the 
law of presumptive evidence will grant him, when he 
undertakes, on the strength of that testimony aided 
only by conjecture, to set the past judgment of his- 
tory wholly aside, and reconstruct past civilization 
upon liis new theory, as though the burden of proof 
did not rest still upon his own shoulders. 



HISTORICAL STYLE, 

I DOUBT whether I ought to discourse at all upon 
this particular topic. There are various critics for 
whose literary opinions I cherish high respect, who 
have not scrupled to berate me as one of bad taste in 
historical expression. Even when they have come to 
acknowledge that there is some force in the new 
materials brought to light in my five volumes, and 
that my work has after all some merit in point of 
scholarship, they still maintain their disapprobation of 
its rough, harsh, and "swashbuckling" style. "I 
cannot get over your facts," writes very frankly one 
New England professor, whose critical acumen is 
reputed so great that I am almost tempted to believe 
him ; " but 1 must still say that I think your style 
very inelegant." 

And yet there are other critics, equally competent, 
who have gone out of their way to commend this same 
historical composition as warm, vivid in its coloring, 
lucid, epigrammatic, and "intensely interesting;" 
which is praise enough for any man. And years ago 
the present author was pronounced in a leading law 
periodical " the best law-writer of our day in point of 
style." All these are the unsought comments of 
personal strangers to myself, and not my own. I 
conclude, therefore, that men of good critical acquire- 
ments differ among themselves in their estimates of 
what should constitute a meritorious style. This, I 



72 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

imagine, is partly clue to the fact that some whose 
ordained function it is to criticise and not perform, 
set up an ideal of all-round perfection that neither 
they themselves could have attained nor any other 
man who ever lived ; but more still I ascribe it to that 
difference in prepossessions and affinity with which 
they encounter the particular book and its subject- 
matter, and hence to a differing capacity for sympathy 
with the writer. If what an author has written 
reaches his reader's heart, moves him to better thought 
and action, and makes the responsive chord of patriot- 
ism beat quickly, all close analysis of style merges in 
the immediate effect produced. Some critics have 
warm feelings, others are cold, negative, unresponsive, 
even where their opinions are much alike ; some flatter 
the well-assured only, others wish to extend a help- 
ing hand to new-comers. "Live and let live" is a 
good reply for all literar}^ writers to make to their 
critics. The patient fruit of twenty years' thought 
and study, as the sage ]\Iontesquieu reminds us, is 
not to be estimated lightly nor dismissed with a 
cursory glance. Let us recall modestly the instance 
of ]\Lacaulay, who, after his splendid success and 
popularity, looked over the volumes he had written, 
and, owning their deficiencies in many respects, took 
final courage in the thought that he might after all 
have written much worse, and at all events had done 
something with his pen for the advancement of 
learning. 

In recalling a former apology for my literary short- 
comings,^ I am pleased to find that Gibbon, the writer 
of history whom I most admire, made his extensive 
work liis own original product, sending his own 
written copy to the press, as his memoirs inform us, 
^ See paper on "Literary Industries." 



HISTORICAL STYLE. 73 

without external aid or suggestion. Yet external 
aid may improve particular expressions; Jefferson's 
draft of the Declaration of Independence is in point, 
which critical debate in Congress modified into a 
model document fit for immortality. High-sounding 
phrases, such as a fervid mind works out in its lonely 
chamber when excited with its subject, need often to 
be pruned. But for all this the best of revisers in 
the long run is the writer himself; and to write his- 
tory well requires, as Jefferson himself has observed 
so fitly, "a whole life of observation, of inquiry, of 
labor and correction." 

A few observations on this same subject of his- 
torical style I would ask leave to offer as the result 
of my own matured reflection. First of all, an 
author's style should be the image of himself, and if 
it exposes him instead as the copyist of other minds, 
it must fail of impressiveness. A literary writer need 
not be a genius, but he should be genuine ; he should 
be sincere and true to his preconceived purpose ; he 
should put forward his stock of erudition and influ- 
ence, as one who thinks for himself, judges for him- 
self, seeks the truth, and writes accordingl}^ Carlyle 
was not perhaps a historian in his breadth of judg- 
ment, but he wrote on historical subjects with picto- 
rial skill ; and though rough and impetuous in style, 
exaggerated and at times almost hysterical, he deliv- 
ered his message as one who felt the Deity within, 
and after his own characteristic method was pro- 
foundly effective. He wrote in rugged earnest, and 
the world believed him honest. Emerson, on the 
other hand, a contemporary and friend, who harmon- 
ized with Carlyle in many ways, was in concrete 
expression the antipodes. The calm mood of the 
Greek philosopher suited his own more tranquil con- 



74 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

tact with life ; he equally was in earnest and true to 
himself 5 hut his method was to string pearls of 
thought together in apothegms. Was tliis smooth 
composition in a literary style? Yet many writers 
may well have envied Emerson's literary influence. 
Among American statesmen famed for their mastery 
of expression, the clear and peremptory diction of 
Hamilton in his correspondence stands in marked 
contrast with Jefferson's graceful and philanthropic 
flow; Calhoun and Webster could no more have 
exchanged in debate their respective methods of 
oratory than their political views or their strikingly 
different physical frames. Yet each and all of these 
men, and many more who might readily be men- 
tioned for illustration, found scope for a wide popular 
impression because the style of each was appropriate 
to the individual and characterized him ; not one of 
them was weak enough to model himself after a 
contemporary. 

Next, to borrow the advice of our admirable 
Prescott, whose literary taste was exquisite, one 
should chiefly "be engrossed with the thought and 
not with the fashion of expressing it." For the chief 
thing after all in effective writing is to put clearly the 
idea intended. Private and familiar letters often 
exceed in interest the formal ones more sedulously 
composed, because there is more of a j)erson's plain 
self in them, and moreover a pith and directness that 
shows the writer to be intent upon imparting what he 
has to say. And the same holds true of familiar 
conversation with those you know intimately enough 
to speak as the heart prompts you. Contrast, for 
instance, as printed in the same volumes, the confi- 
dential family letters of our second President with his 
ceremonious official responses which exchanged lofty 



HISTORICAL STYLE. 75 

platitudes; and yet John Adams was a forcible 
Avxiter. We might compare many a scholar's chance 
notes jotted down, while he was warmly pursuing his 
facts, with the stately composition he afterwards 
elaborated for the printer, and we should see that the 
preparatory work, however hasty, was often in point 
of readableness superior because he was not engrossed 
with the expression. "Tacitus," once remarked Dr. 
Johnson, "seems rather to have made notes for an 
historical work than to have written a history; " but 
for all that, among the world's historians Tacitus 
ranks vni\\ the greatest; and deservedly so, assuming 
that his notes were accurate. 

It has been said of some great English statesman 
whose style was pellucid and forcible — I think it was 
Cobden — tliat he would formulate carefully the sub- 
stance of what he had to express and then express it 
in the first words that occurred to him. Many a bright 
man tells well the tale of his own personal adventure, 
since he has only to renew his sensations and describe 
them with effect, whereas to throw one's self into 
another's sensations and reproduce them well requires 
a certain sympathetic creativeness. In either case 
one should be intent upon the symptoms and due 
sequence and keep to his narrative. Clear thinking 
and clear expression go naturally together. 

But all this we may fairly qualify by observing 
further that expression, to be adequate, requires 
much training, like skill in any physical pursuit. 
For the choice and command of language, as Gibbon 
well tells us, is the fruit of exercise. There is no 
perfection in nature without sldll. In art, not 
chance, lies true ease in writing, as the poet says; 
by which I understand is meant that art which has 
attained to something of the perfection of a second 



76 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

nature. The musician, the dancer, the gymnast, the 
actor, the consummate orator, moves us deeply because 
he strains after nothing, but in his higher plane seems 
perfectly natural ; his grace, his strength, his power to 
interpret and apply, is but the superior endowment 
which incessant training has made supreme. The man 
who guides you among the high mountain summits 
has lived and lingered among them most of his life. 
Compare Shakespeare's earlier and later plays and 
you will see how the imagination, at first so labored 
in its expression, embodied its rich ideas in his prime 
as freely as the pen could move. Daniel Webster's 
compacted power of statement, simple as it seems, 
was the result of long effort and experience ; and with 
all Clay's impassioned imagery which appealed so 
strongly to the heart, we cannot doubt that, sponta- 
neous as he appeared, he was a most carefully trained 
orator. Public speaking and the writing of public 
history are closely allied ; and if in either pursuit the 
utterance finds real dignity, it is invariably because 
study and sustained effort have lifted one to a higher 
plane of intellectual life, so that in his greatest mood 
grandeur of expression comes from grandeur of 
feeling. 

Elegant extracts, quotations kept in a castor to be 
peppered over one's composition so as to give an 
affected spice of learning and loftiness, I hold in little 
estimation. But to feel the stir in your soul of the 
noble passages remembered which others have written 
is quite another matter. It is the memory of such 
passages, of bosom-lines, of past fables or fancies, 
which well up in the thoughts while one is writing, 
and whose verification may be left for another time, 
that may well mingle with his own composition. 
Burke for a prose writer, jNIilton for a poet, have 



HISTORICAL STYLE. 11 

formulated grand and inspiring ideas and images that 
may well lie slumbering in your recollection until the 
glow of solitary writing calls them from the inner 
chamber of the brain. What critic but a stupid one 
would take Webster to task for having paraphrased 
"Paradise Lost" in so many of his most eloquent 
passages, instead of reciting by lengthy verse ? That 
great master of speech knew that eloquence lay in 
impetuous imagery and not in the display of pedantry ; 
hence when he quoted at all it was rather by preg- 
nant phrase or allusion than by rote. We writers, 
knowing wherein our literary work shall consist, may 
gain skill likewise by the study and absorption of 
master composers, master passages, which stir us to 
our best. And in perfecting our own individual 
style of literary composition let us not only observe 
the idioms, the construction of sentences, the general 
arrangement, in compositions which other authors 
have made effective and which affect ourselves, but 
enrich our own vocabulary besides by figurative and 
appropriate words and epithets, such as we find in 
our casual meditation or whenever we are reading-. 

There is somewhat of a changing fashion in literary 
style just as there is in dress and architecture. A 
century ago or more men seeking intellectual culture 
were so enamoured of the " Spectator " that they would 
transcribe its essays again and again to acquire that 
elegant grace of good breeding and classical persiflage 
which gave the Addisonian school such renown. Dr. 
' Johnson set the fashion of pompous and well-balanced 
sentences, which, though of somewhat ornate and 
imposing construction, gave doubtless a dignity to 
high discourse in prose. For a choice English style, 
appropriate to orations and history, I doubt whether 
anything will ever prove so truly classical and rich as 



78 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

that nearer the simplicity of the Elizabethan age, 
with which Webster, Irving, and Prescott supplied 
our literature half a century ago ; though the preva- 
lent and latest fashion tends rather to pith and a 
familiar directness of expression, with less wealth of 
reading and imagery thrown in, and more of the 
French repartee and sententiousness. Macaulay intro- 
duced into historical writing an English style pecu- 
liarly his own which many have admired, — that of 
the modern reviewer, brilliant, dogmatic, ephemeral 
in its application, with a vast outpouring of contem- 
porary detail over the main narrative, and a glittering 
array of statistics in the background. He has bred 
many imitators ; as, for instance, in that emphatic " I 
purpose " of the first paragraph in the introductory 
cliapter which unfolds the historian's plan to the 
reader, — a plan, by the way, which he did not live 
to fully execute. This is a Homeric introduction; 
and Thucydides (in the third person, however) begins 
after much the same strain. Such an opening smacks 
of egotism, as some Avould say ; but perhaps it marlvs 
rather an effort to dispense with the usual " preface " 
which other solid writers employ more familiarly for 
a like purpose. 

Imitation is always a sign of dependence or imma- 
turity ; but some writers are so imbued with its sjjirit 
that they transport their shrine from one object of 
worship to anotlier; and authors who have formed a 
good style of their own have been known to spoil it 
by coming under the captivation of some new master. 
We should do well to get rid of such subservience 
and stand on our own pedestal. But when one is 
about to engage in some great literary task of inven- 
tion, it may strongly stimulate him to explore the 
production of some master mind and study its grasp 



HISTORICAL STYLE. 79 

of similar work. Prescott prepared himself for his 
famous " Conquest of Mexico " by reading other nar- 
ratives of individual enterprise, — Voltaire's " Charles 
XII." and Livy's "Hannibal." Dignified reading 
stirs the blood for dignified composition ; and yet to 
write well the first chapter of a dignified narrative 
costs many a futile effort before the will gains domi- 
nance. Any book meant to be popular needs most 
of all to be lively and entertaining; but for all that 
it need not fail of lofty expression when developing 
the serious drama of governmental life. One should 
make good use of the concrete; and there is much 
choice for good taste to exercise among historical 
material. Look for facts of kindling suggestion, and 
for such as illustrate most clearly and give at once 
most vividly a deep insight into the age. It is well 
for the narrator to strike into some new path; to 
shape an easy transition from one scene or topic to 
another, so as not to fatigue the reader by keeping 
his gaze too constantly in one direction. 

As to one's final composition for the press, 
Prescott' s idea is the correct one : that the only rule 
is to write with freedom and nature, even with occa- 
sional homeliness of expression, and with such variety 
in alternating long and short sentences (and para- 
graphs too, we might add) as may be essential to har- 
monious effect. With "Ferdinand and Isabella," 
his first work, this conscientious self-critic was not 
well satisfied, for he felt that ho had elaborated it too 
carefully. Indeed, as his biography shows us, he 
wrote and worked over those two maiden volumes for 
ten years, and even then felt almost afraid to print 
until his father told him it would be rank cowardice 
not to do so. " After all, " as the scholarly Prescott 
well concludes, " it is not the construction of the sen- 



80 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

tence, but the tone of the coloring, which produces 
the effect. If the sentiment is warm, lively, forcible, 
the reader will be carried along without much heed 
to the arrangement of periods, which differs exceed- 
ingly in different standard writers. Put life into the 
narrative if you would have it take. Elaborate and 
artificial fastidiousness in the foim of expression is 
highly detrimental to this. A book may be made up 
of perfect sentences and yet the general impression be 
very imperfect." 

As an author's habits and experience in composi- 
tion may be of use to others, let me follow so laudable 
an example and state my own. We shall admit that 
a creative and highly imaginative writer, and a poet 
most of all, must wait for his inspired moments and 
forge his best work in the heat of some glowing occa- 
sion. But they whose intellectual occupation requires 
a study and prolific product should habituate them- 
selves to continuous and systematic labor of the pen 
and make inspiration their handmaid; and among 
such steady producers we may reckon the preacher, 
the journalist, and the regular historian. Concentra- 
tion of the faculties, where imagination must be 
brought into play, with the application of realities, 
and a full style is of consequence as Avell as a flow- 
ing one, is gained with difficulty, to be sure ; but habit 
triumphs in securing it. In my law treatises, which, 
inclusive of changes in the various editions, cover 
some six thousand anq)le pages of text and notes, and 
in whose treatment clearness in the development of 
principles was of the chief consequence, I have, 
with rare exceptions in certain paragraphs, sent regu- 
larl}' my first and only draft to the printer as written 
out with the running pen, keeping the general plan 
and proportion of each volume well in view, and feel- 



HISTORICAL STYLE. 81 

ing my own way from one legal doctrine to another, 
so as to impart knowledge by induction as my own 
mind comprehended it. The summary of law or 
general conclusion on any topic followed thus the 
exposition; and as for the introductory chapter to 
each volume, so-called, which took a general survey 
of the field, I usually wrote it last, gathering perti- 
nent suggestions as the main investigation proceeded. 
The professional mind intent upon illustrating and 
tracing out rules and their subtle limitations, as 
applied by our courts, compares and comments upon 
the mass of cases, and may leave warmth of coloring 
to take care of itself, so long as he applies a logical 
analysis and sound sense and is himself interested. 

In historical composition, on the other hand, one 
feels the greater sublimity and scope of the task, in a 
literary aspect, and having rules less ready at hand to 
rest upon and the ipse dixit of others, trusts less to his 
first simple expression. Political maxims, metaphors, 
images, comparisons, troop forth from the mind into 
the pen, and obstruct the limpid course of his narra- 
tive. The first expression needs condensing in such 
a case even after it is clear. Macaulay himself is 
recorded as having reduced a day's stretch of writing 
to a third of its original bulk; and most historical 
manuscript, I apprehend, will bear a careful revision 
and compression. I formed early a plan for such 
historical composition which I recommend to others. 
After working out the daily task I would hand the 
manuscript with its rough alterations to my amanuen- 
sis, to be neatly copied on good paper and spread out 
on wide lines ready for my final revision. This copy 
was laid aside, and after some convenient interval 
of weeks or months, I would turn from rough com- 
position and devote a good space of time, when full 

G 



82 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

of the particular chapter and in a glow with the sub- 
ject, to revising a batch of this convenient copy with 
a free and rapid pen. JManuscript in this final shape 
was sent to be printed. To print and read proofs of 
the earlier pages while you are still composing the 
later ones keeps you fully absorbed and abreast of 
your main subject, and urges the mind on to harmo- 
nious completion. One is pleased to find that so 
much that looked bad in the manuscript beams out 
neat, concise, and attractive from the printed page. 
I at least have found this a great encouragement; 
and yet I admit it is not safe to begin the press-work 
of a volume while you are composing it, unless your 
good health and spirits, and leisure too, may be 
reckoned upon. 

The hardest thing of all in such responsible compo- 
sition is to pitch to the right key at the start and 
sound the dominant chord. Even Gibbon, who is 
said to have acquired such final ease of expression 
that he would send his first rough and unaided copy 
to press, relates that he experimented long before he 
could hit the middle tone between a dull chronicle 
and rhetorical declamation. His first chapter, he 
tells us, was composed three times and his second 
twice, — an experience, I dare say, which many later 
writers of a similar pursuit have repeated. Another 
habit which he formed, and which I think worthy of 
all emulation, was that of arranging well in his mind 
the facts and form of expression before he sat down 
to the desk. It surely saves much manual labor to 
think before you take up the pen. At the close of 
each day's task, and while the mind is still excited, 
you are likely to discern a clew to the next day's 
commencement, or some better expression of what 
you have just written; and in either case you might 



HISTORICAL STYLE. 83 

jot down a memorandum. Rumination on a quiet 
afternoon's walk will aid you to memorize materials 
and give them some sort of shape for the next day's 
pages ; and after a peaceful night's rest such details 
as you may have scanned or thought over group 
themselves so fairly that you enter your morning 
study sufficiently advanced in thought to begin the 
new day's work intelligently and in a becoming 
frame of mind. It is better to guide your thoughts 
thus gently into the right channel than to attempt to 
force them at command in your study-chair, with pen 
in hand and eyes rolling idly to seek that spontaneous 
inspiration which does not descend. 

There is one thing, however, which it seems to me 
that every author should observe who hopes to build 
with success the lofty prose. He must aid the 
triumph of continuity of thought by keeping con- 
tinuity itself down to a reasonable span. Whether 
by pure recreation or by changing the mental move- 
ments, he should give his brain all the relaxation it 
regularly needs. Some great historians have risen 
with the sun and lighted their winter fire while their 
household slept : and at all events the morning hours 
which end with noon seem to me decidedly the best 
for smooth writing, because the mind comes fresh and 
recuperated to its toil. But whatever hours or time 
of the day one may prefer, he should fix his routine 
and hold fast to it. Nor should he under any cir- 
cumstances give more than three or four consecutive 
hours of each day to real intellectual composition. 
For the rest of one's daily course of work, be it 
longer or shorter, let him examine proof-sheets, 
attend to his business affairs, study materials or 
collect and arrange tliem, and keep up his correspond- 
ence. For those of us mature mortals not of iron 



84 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

constitution, a full third of every day belongs to out- 
of-door exercise, light reading, and social intercourse, 
and another third to sleep. The mind that moves 
steadily on, oppressed by no spasms of exertion and 
no worry, accomplishes far more in the end than that 
which races recklessly on unchecked and then suc- 
cumbs to over-effort. And even for our intellectual 
hours it is well, as my personal experience convinces 
me, to turn from one mental employment to another; 
to vary composition with study and note-taking; and 
to compose, if one may learn to do so, in different 
places of abode and among different local surround- 
ings, as where one changes from his winter to his 
summer home, from the roar and rush of city life to 
the birds and the green pines. The brightest intel- 
lect fades and flickers out where the will has abused 
it i just as the diamond itself, which is after all but a 
crystallization, dissolves, when we are foolish enough 
to apply the blow-pipe, into the same dross as common 
charcoal. 



LAFAYETTE'S TOUR IN 1824. 

Lafayette's final visit to the United States, in 
1824-25, was in two aspects most remarkable. A 
venerated hero returned after an absence of full forty 
years, to see our prosperous nation enjoying in peace 
the independence in whose cause, when first he stood 
on this soil, his sword was drawn. And this hero 
was himself a foreign nobleman; one who in youth 
had so generously given of his treasures and his 
blood to the American people as to seem an American 
by adoption; and who yet became afterward identi- 
fied, in the prime of manhood, with the cause of 
liberty in his own native land, as the conspicuous, 
perhaps the only, revolutionary leader of France of 
those times whose record left nothing to blush for. 
A guest like this no nation was ever likely to enter- 
tain a second time. The splendor of Lafayette's 
later reputation in the old hemisphere heightened his 
earlier renown in the new. His whole life had been 
consecrated to the cause of liberty and human rights. 
Republicanism itself was ennobled when one so illus- 
trious could be claimed as friend and father. 

No wonder, then, that on Lafayette's return to the 
United States, after so long an absence, the heart of 
this whole people was poured out in salutation. To 
use Clay's felicitous expression, it seemed a realiza- 
tion of that vain wish that the patriot-father might 

Eeprinted from 10 Magazine of American History, 243 (1883). 



86 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

revisit his country after death, and contemplate the 
intermediate changes which time had wrought. But 
that figure of speech was inadequate; for the man 
who now revisited America, and stood in the midst 
of posterity, was not like the risen dead, but rather 
as some long-absent champion, who, leaving America 
free, had gone out to liberate new worlds. There 
had been no grave, no oblivion, to close over the 
patriot in this instance, but the bond of sympathy 
which united this people and their benefactor had 
remained constantly unbroken. Seas had divided, 
but absence made hearts fonder. 

The season of his arrival was most proj^itious for 
thus pledging anew this most precious of interna- 
tional friendships. Our second war with Great 
Britain had in its happy termination secured a per- 
manent confidence at home and abroad in American 
institutions, and divorced the United States forever 
from Europe. Under the long and eminently prudent 
administration of jNIonroe, now drawing to its peaceful 
close, our people enjoyed a constantly growing pros- 
perity. What they remembered of dangers past, 
served most of all to endear the recollections of the 
great founders of this republic, their sufferings and 
sacrifices. The memories of '76 were peculiarly 
tender; battle monuments had been planned and 
liberal provision made for aged survivors of the 
revolutionary struggle. Children refused to nourish 
the old party feuds of their parents ; we had ceased 
to be partisans of England or France* in politics we 
were all Americans and republicans. Those leading 
spirits of the late momentous half-century of war, 
hatred and bloodshed, were disappearing. George 
III. and Bonaparte had recently died, within a few 
months of one another. The few survivors of 



LAFATETTE'S TOUR IN 1824. 87 

American independence who lingered on the scene 
inspired reverence, but tliey had ceased to participate 
actively in affairs. Monroe was of necessity the last 
President of the United States identified mth the 
revolutionary epoch. And Lafayette himself, once 
the young companion of Washington, had now 
become the sole surviving general officer of Washing- 
ton's immortal army. 

In honoring Lafayette thus publicly our govern- 
ment appears to have irritated, willingly enough, 
though not purposely, the Bourbon family, who once 
more (for a brief spell as events proved) occupied the 
throne of France. Congress at the same session, in 
fact, which opened with that celebrated Presidential 
message announcing what has since been styled the 
"Monroe Doctrine," passed its resolution of February 
4, 1824, complimentary to Lafayette, which, in view 
of his intended visit, authorized a national ship to 
bring him over. Our new minister to France, James 
Brown, bore to Lafayette almost simultaneously an 
autograph letter from the President which made a like 
offer, and assured the marquis of the sincere attach- 
ment of the whole American nation and their ardent 
desire to see him once more in the United States. 
Monroe's timely protest against any further extension 
of Europe's political systems to the American conti- 
nent, had meantime, in connection with England's 
disfavor, oj^erated to check the scheme which France 
and the " Holy Alliance " meditated, at the fall of 
Cadiz, for subjugating the Spanish-American repub- 
lics and restoring the rule of royalty. Loyal to the 
principles he had always maintained, Lafayette had 
of late incurred the resentment of Louis XVIII. by 
speeches opposing the government policy in the 
French chamber of deputies. A corrupt ministry 



88 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

now succeeded in remo\dng liim from the national 
representation, and Lafayette was left free to accept 
his invitation to America. While offering no con- 
straint upon his movements, either in departing or 
returning, the French government, nevertheless, by 
means of its police and gendarmes, checked the public 
expressions of love and gratitude which Lafayette's 
fellow-countrymen would eagerly have rendered. 

Lafayette's star had risen and sunk repeatedly 
with the vicissitudes of France, and the time now 
approached when, the Bourbons finally dethroned, 
this veteran soldier of freedom would once more be 
worthily trusted by his countrymen. But in the 
mean time, and while in temporary disgrace, the 
opportunity was offered for \dsiting the United 
States, and accordingly Lafayette came. 

I shall not attempt to set forth the narrative of 
Lafayette's memorable tour. The main incidents of 
the journey are well preserved in the published jour- 
nal of Levasseur, Lafayette's private secretary, and in 
American newspapers of the da}^, particularly "Niles's 
Register." Quincy, in his "Figures of the Past," 
well describes Lafayette's visits to Boston. The hero 
traversed every State and every section of this Union, 
and wherever he went he was welcomed with love and 
respect. His health and his spirits improved almost 
constantly, and but one accident, and that hardly a 
serious one as to personal consequences, — the sink- 
ing of a steamboat on the Ohio, — interrupted the 
progress of the nation's guest. 

What I wish in this paper is to state some historical 
facts connected with Lafayette's tour, which are not 
generally known, and which I have gathered from 
some unpublished correspondence, chiefly among the 
Monroe and Gouverneur manuscripts. 



LAFAYETTE S TOUR IN 1824. 89 

The general impression has been that Lafayette's 
visit to the United States was mutually intended for 
his pleasure and the public gratification, and for no 
more. This view, however, is not strictly correct. 
True, there was no special political significance 
attached to the tour, though this idea some French- 
men entertained at the time, imagining that some 
plan of conquest was on foot in which he was to bear 
a part. True, too, that Lafayette's long-cherished 
wish to revisit the scenes of his youthful exploits had 
of late been constantly reciprocated by the American 
press and his private American correspondents. But 
in the present instance our administration was tacitly 
pledged to bestoAv upon the last of the illustrious 
revolutionary leaders some tangible proof of the public 
gratitude, such as, it was well understood, he had 
good reason to demand. Lafayette was far from 
affluent at this time, and the loss of royal favor 
involved a private sacrifice to one of his rank. He, 
a stranger to these colonies, and owing us nothing, 
had in our hour of peril voluntarily expended from 
his own means, sacrificed his ease, shed his blood, 
and risked his life in our service. As a revolutionary 
officer, he was entitled to public lands, and having, 
in fact, received a specific grant from Congress at 
the annexation of Louisiana, the location made by his 
agent in that territory near New Orleans proved to 
be in conflict with some earlier grants. Respecting 
that claim, Lafayette appears to have been in corre- 
spondence with Edward Livingston, who had recently 
been elected to Congress from Louisiana, and under- 
stood the embarrassments which had arisen. Hence 
President ]Monroe, and men prominent in influence 
with his administration, becoming acquainted with 
Lafayette's pecuniary affairs, encouraged him in his 



90 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

half-formed purpose of coming to this country, at the 
same time treating the chximant with the utmost tact. 

The greatest dehcacy was shown in all the arrange- 
ments prepared for Lafayette. And thus was it that, 
returning to America in the modest expectation of, 
perhaps, honorable attentions, he found at once, on 
his first landing in New York, a whole community's 
gratitude to be his welcome. Where, indeed, could 
one better be than in the bosom of a family like this ? 
So astonished was he, so overcome, to find a great 
demonstration made for him where he had expected 
to land quietly and engage private lodgings, that his 
eyes flowed with tears, and, violently pressing both 
hands to his heart, he exclaimed, "It will burst!" 
But the same public demonstrations which greeted 
Lafayette on his arrival at New York were exhibited 
wherever else he went. 

In the course of some fourteen months he traversed 
the whole country, visiting every State in the Union 
and all the leading cities, and received everywhere 
the same sincere token of reverence and affection, 
though the characteristic expression might differ. 
The nation's guest was felt to be the people's friend. 
With chief magistrates, national. State, and civic, to 
perform the honors on their own behalf, the great 
body of American citizens themselves constituted his 
host. They took Lafayette into their own keeping, 
carried him from j^lace to place, and feasted and 
applauded him as long as he would remain. The 
wish, expressed on many a public occasion and 
cheered, was that he would become at length an 
American citizen, and end his days here. When at 
last he re-embarked for France, the round of hospi- 
talities had been by no means exhausted, and many 
invitations were of necessity declined. 



LAFAYETTE'S TOUR IN 1824. 91 

The tacit pledge of Congress, that the honor paid 
Lafayette shoukl not be an empty one, was not for- 
gotten. By an act approved on the 28th of Decem- 
ber, 1824, the sum of |200,000 was voted him, 
together with a township of land, to be located on 
any of the unappropriated public domain, in consid- 
eration of his services and sacrifices in the war of the 
Revolution. This munificent grant readily passed 
both houses by a vote unanimous. A joint com- 
mittee waited upon him with a copy of the act, asldng 
him in behalf of Congress to permit this partial dis- 
charge of the national obligation. Taken by surprise 
as he was by this munificent donation, Lafayette 
could but accept it under the circumstances. Not 
only did the voice of the nation sustain Congress in 
its generous action, but several of the States, Virginia, 
New York, and Maryland, for instance, would have 
added their own largess, had not Lafayette himself 
repressed their generosity. 

If Lafayette's appearance somewhat surprised, he 
did not long disappoint, the spectator. He presented 
a fine, portly figure, nearly six feet high; his 
weight of years was lightly worn, and his only 
apparent infirmity was a slight lameness, resulting 
from his old wound at Brandy^vine. That lithe, 
graceful youth, with elastic step and joyous face, 
whose bronze image is passed by New Yorkers of the 
present day in Union Square, had, indeed, vanished ; 
yet Lafayette's appearance astonished by its vigorous 
contrast with those bent and gray-haired veterans 
who saluted him as their compatriot. This was partly 
the eifect of French art, though more was owing to 
Lafayette's French vivacity and perennial good- 
nature. Looking closely upon his face, one saw 
traces of his sufferings ; and Quincy tells us that the 



92 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

brown wig wliicli set low on liis forehead, concealing 
some of his wrinkles, did yeoman's service to one 
who rode so constantly in an open carriage. Lowing 
with uncovered head. The old Indian chief, Red 
Jacket, who had been with Lafayette in 1784, frankly 
expressed his amazement that time should have left the 
general so fresh a countenance and so hairy a scalp. 

We must remember, too, that Lafayette's American 
renown came to him remarkably early in life. He 
was scarcely twenty years of age when he bore to 
Washington a major-general's commission, which 
Congress had conferred upon a titled foreigner only 
as a mark of honorary distinction, but which soon 
became the credentials of his active service. 

What, one may inquire, were the strongest impres- 
sions produced upon Lafayette himself by this Ameri- 
can visit, so impressive to his American hosts? Of 
these, some indications are to be found in Lafayette's 
correspondence with American friends after his return 
home, as also in memorials of the tour which others 
have preserved. Lafayette himself appears never to 
have summed up the results of his experience here, 
nor could he have been expected to do so. Tliat he 
Avas both delighted and surprised with the constant 
enthusiasm of his reception cannot be doubted. These 
honors from tlie land of his earlj^ exploits were sub- 
stantial honors too. For himself, personally, it was 
a memorable episode in an eventful life ; a relief from 
oppressive cares ; a vacation tour during which old 
age revelled among the scenes and recollections of a 
well-spent youth, and where he could forget the 
vexations and responsibilities of official station. Here 
he was truly a benefactor; a successful philanthro- 
pist; a father visiting a distant son well established 
in his own home. 



LAFAYETTE'S TOUR IN 1824. ~ 93 

Lafayette was at heart a consistent republican, and 
a man of liberal principles, sympathizing fully with 
our political institutions. The nature of our govern- 
ment he had long intelligently comprehended. But 
as a Frenchman, and with reference to preserving 
firmly the essential liberties of his own countrymen, 
he believed that a constitutional monarchy was the 
form of government best adapted to the existing 
wants of France. Of the sincerity of that belief, 
already demonstrated on one signal occasion, he was 
to give a last proof soon after his return. Hence 
American institutions afforded Lafayette, at this 
time, no occasion for minute study; for the bent of 
his mind was practical, and for his generation, at 
least, France had done with broad experiments of 
self-government. Holding these views, Lafayette 
carried nevertheless a heart whose generous emotions 
had not been stifled by the hard vicissitudes of ex- 
perience, and though himself of aristocratic rank, he 
felt a personal interest in mankind as brothers. The 
example of the American republic seemed precious 
in his estimation beyond any immediate reckoning. 
" Perpetual union among the United States, " was his 
toast on one occasion: "it has saved us in our times 
of danger; it will save the world." 

Gratitude to America for its own gratitude was 
doubtless the feeling predominant on this tour. 
Next, the rapid development of the American nation, 
under its constitutional government, doubtless im- 
pressed him: the immense extension of our terri- 
torial area since the revolutionary war; the threefold 
increase of population ; the rapid development of the 
West; the original number of the States nearly 
doubled. Here, too, he saw that every one had his 
pursuit in life, so that many who accosted him seemed 



94 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

to wonder how a Frencli nobleman supported himself. 
More than once he observed chief rulers and high 
dignitaries travelling without peculiar distinction; a 
high cabinet officer, who had served in European 
courts besides, preparing his bed upon the saloon floor 
of a crowded steamboat ; the governor of a State pull- 
ing in a skiff to help unload a sunken vessel ; states- 
men often seeming to receive social honors as secondary 
to some private citizens. The only time during his 
tour that Lafayette's carriage was stopped for a toll 
was once when he rode with the President of the 
United States. But the universal respect for law 
and order moved him to admiration. It seemed as 
if the largest crowds that gathered to honor his 
approach had resolved not to disgrace American 
institutions in the eyes of their fraternal guest. 
Lafayette's entrance into Philadelphia caused not the 
slightest disturbance of the peace, though its popu- 
lation of 120,000 souls was augmented by 40,000 
strangers, who came to participate in the rejoicings. 
Multitudes huzzaed that day in the streets as the 
procession passed, and multitudes at night walked 
the streets for miles to witness the illuminations ; and 
yet there was found no need of increasing the police, 
nor, as the mayor announced, was a single complaint 
reported the next morning. 

As a Frenchman and a guest, however, Lafayette 
was less likely to draw such political comparisons 
than to comment upon wliat our general humanity 
inculcates. Two suggestions which he made in a 
fatherly way from this latter standpoint deserve our 
chief remembrance. They related to prison reform 
and negro emancipation, and were addressed frankly 
to those immediately responsible for existing systems 
and capable of changing them. 



LAFAYETTE'S TOUR IN 182J^. 95 

Visiting Pliiladelpliia, where he was shown a new 
and commodious prison neariy finished, on the plan of 
soHtary confinement, — a mode of punishment which 
Pennsylvania had within twenty years adopted in its 
fullest extent, — Lafayette, recalling his personal 
experience, observed that solitary confinement was a 
punishment which might lead to madness, and by no 
means, in his own case at least, had caused a refor- 
mation of opinions. 

So, too, did the sincerity of Lafayette's convictions 
on the subject of human slavery force him to com- 
mend its abolition whenever a word of judicious 
counsel might aid the cause. The rapid development 
of New York, where traces of the former existence of 
this institution were now fast disappearing, he placed 
in sad contrast with the condition of other Atlantic 
States to the southward where the evil still remained. 
His heart was pained by the exhibitions of human 
bondage which he witnessed at the South just after 
his Northern tour. And as he found oj^portunity, 
while in Virginia, he discussed the delicate problem, 
and especially when visiting the ex-Presidents Jeffer- 
son and Madison, never failing on his part to defend 
the right which all men, without exception, have to 
liberty. ]\Iost Virginians with whom Lafayette thus 
conversed treated his suggestions with entire courtesy ; 
they frankly condemned the principle of slavery, and 
though citing strong objections to a general and 
immediate emancipation, appeared ready to rid them- 
selves of the curse, could only some feasible method 
be shown. 

For that ancient State of proud revolutionary tra- 
ditions and illustrious leaders, Lafayette undoubtedly 
felt a peculiar tenderness, with perhaj^s a pang of 
disappointment at its present condition. There re- 



96 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

posed the ashes of his paternal friend and exemplar, 
the first in war and peace. Jefferson, too, who died 
soon after his visit to Monticello, was a beloved com- 
patriot. The later survivors of the famous Virginian 
trio, Madison and Monroe, were, and continued after 
his return to France, Lafayette's cherished corre- 
spondents. Hearing in later years that Monroe had 
been struggling with poverty, after retiring from 
public station, Lafayette generously offered his purse ; 
but Monroe, with a delicate sense of honor, refused 
to be thus relieved. 

There is an autograph letter among the Monroe 
papers probably never published, which the writer 
has been permitted to read, written from Paris in 
1829, in that neat, angular, half-feminine hand, so 
characteristic of Frenchmen, — one of the last ever 
penned by Lafayette to his Virginia friends. This 
letter was written in view of the approaching Virginia 
convention of that year, and was addressed to ex- 
President Monroe himself, who presided at that con- 
vention. It contains Lafayette's final appeal for 
brinoino- A^'irsfinia into the sisterhood of free States. 
"Oh, how proud and elated I would feel," he writes, 
" if something could be contrived in your convention 
whereby Virginia, who was the first to petition 
asrainst the slave trade and afterwards to forbid it, 
and who has published the first declaration of rights, 
would take an exalted situation among the promoters 
of measures tending first to ameliorate, then gradually 
to abolish, the slave mode of labor." Happily might 
the Old Dominion preserve that letter in a golden 
frame had she followed voluntarily liLs disinterested 
advice. 



MONROE AND THE RHEA LETTER. 

The Seminole War of 1817-18 was hardly worthy 
of its imposing title, so far as concerned the belliger- 
ent parties themselves and their encounters; but in 
respect of the political controversies, domestic and 
international, which General Jackson's conduct of 
that war provoked, it assumes in our history a memo- 
rable importance. Roving Indians from East Florida, 
a province which Spain at that time held by a feeble 
and loosening grasp, approached Fort Scott on the 
Georgia frontier, surprised a boat-load of United 
States troops with their wives and children, who 
were ascending the Appalachicola River, and cruelly 
butchered the whole party. The administration at 
Washington, on receiving the startling news, ordered 
General Jackson to the front. The hero of New 
Orleans displayed his customary energy and prompt- 
ness. Having raised an additional force of volunteers, 
he marched rapidly from Nashville to the southern 
frontiers, and drove the bloodthirsty Seminoles into 
Florida. Pursued to St. Mark's after a slight 
encounter, the enemy escaped southward into their 
inaccessible swamps, and in less than six months 
from the date of the massacre this Indian war was 
over. 

But Jackson was not content that hostilities should 
end thus easily. Two British subjects had come into 

Reprmtod from 12 Magazine of American History, 308 (1884). 

7 



98 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

his hands, Arbuthnot and Ambrister, and these, 
having been tried by drum-head court-martial on the 
charge of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, he 
caused to be summarily executed, — the one hanged 
and the other shot. Next, turning aside from the 
homeward march, he captured Pensacola, as he had 
already captured St. Mark's against the protest of 
the Spanish commander, and hoisted the stars and 
stripes in place of the Spanish colors; here once 
more alleging that the king's officers thus displaced 
had instigated the Seminoles to make war over the 
American borders. The British people were greatly 
incensed at what they called the murder of two 
fellow-countrymen; and as Castlereagh told Minister 
Rush there would have been a war over this "if the 
ministry had but held up a finger; " but the British 
ministry, having at this time the strongest motives 
for maintaining cordial relations with the United 
States, waived apologies. As for Spain, King Ferdi- 
nand betrayed an impotent rage; but President 
Monroe promptly disavowed General Jackson's acts 
and restored the Spanish posts, at the same time 
sustaining in the main our general's charges of 
Spanish complicity; in which posture of affairs the 
leading European powers refused to espouse Spain's 
quarrel, and the king after much hesitation signed a 
treaty which finally ceded the Floridas to the United 
States for 15, 000, 000 upon stated considerations. 
This cession, negotiations for which had been pend- 
ing some fifteen years, was not in the end procured 
without a skilful management of these Seminole 
difficulties, and to the happy result Jackson's rude 
exposure of the imbecility of Simnish domination 
doubtless contributed. 

Not less memorable is the Seminole War for the 



MONROE AND THE RHEA LETTER. 99 

influence which it came to exert upon the internal 
politics of our country. Jackson's summary seizure 
of the Sjjanish posts was a popular act, and such he 
had meant it to be. Our people, and those especially 
of the Western States, had long borne with impa- 
tience the delays of a fruitless diplomacy, confident 
all the while that in order to obtain a full settlement 
of spoliation claims, old and new, and gain title to 
a territory once paid for, as to West Florida at least, 
when Louisiana was purchased, nothing could be 
easier than to march a resolute body of troops into 
Florida, dislodge the Spanish garrisons, and take 
possession in the name of the United States. This 
Jackson did on his own responsibility; and already 
the most conspicuous man of the age among our mili- 
tary generals, he leaped at once into prominence as a 
candidate for the next presidency. All presidential 
candidates in that day belonged, so to speak, to one 
party; and Sivilians like Crawford and Clay, who 
themselves were ambitious rivals and competitors for 
the succession, committed the fatal error of setting 
on foot a Congressional investigation ; hoping thereby, 
as Jackson's friends have claimed, to procure a public 
censure and crush this new popular favorite. But 
the President himself stood firmly by the general at 
this crisis, as also did Adams and Calhoun of the 
cabinet, and the result of the investigation was the 
utter discomfiture of those who started it, Jackson 
becoming a stronger and more formidable candidate 
than ever. From Jackson's gratitude the Secretary 
of War presently reaped a tangible reward in his own 
successful advancement to the vice-presidency; but 
in the moment of his highest elation, and while he 
reached out his hand for the chief magistracy, Calhoun 
received a fatal stab in the back. Cra^^dFord, his 



100 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

quondam associate and bitter enemy, betrayed to the 
old general the Cabinet secrets of 1818, showing that 
Calhoun had declared, when the seizure of Pensacola 
was announced, that Jackson ought to be court-mar- 
tialled. Being asked to explain, Calhoun sought to 
excuse himself. All the papers and traditions of the 
Seminole War were ransacked for his justification; 
but the angry President remained implacable, and 
under the deadening weight of Jackson's displeasure 
Calhoun with his national aspirations sank as in a 
quicksand. No longer influential with the mass of 
national voters, he devoted his commanding talents 
thenceforth to the philosophy of nullification, to 
State rights, and Southern secession. In fine, the 
Seminole War and its controversies bore, indirectly, 
no slight influence in producing the tremendous civil 
conflict of 1861. 

In recalling the story of the Seminole War, I came 
upon a letter of General Jackson's, written January 
6, 1818, which played a very singular part in the 
discussions which that war elicited. I print it in the 
foot-notes, as it appears in Parton's "Life of Jackson," 
with the essential passage denoted by italics.^ That 

1 This letter reads as follows. See 2 Parton's Life of Jackson, 433 : 
General Jackson to President Monroe. 

Nashville, 6th January, 1818. 
Sir : A few days since I received a letter from the Secretary of 
War, of the 17th nit., with inclosures. Your order of the 19th ult. 
througli him to Brevet Major General Gaines to enter the territory of 
Spain, and cliastise the ruthless savages who liave been depredating 
on the property and lives of our citizens, will meet not only the appro- 
bation of your country, but the approbation of Heaven. Will you, 
however, permit me to suggest the catastroplie that might arise by 
General Gaines' compliance Avith tlie last clause of your order ? Sup- 
pose the case that the Indians are beaten : they take refuge either in 
Pensacola or St. Augustine, which open their gates to them ; to profit 



MONROE AND THE RHEA LETTER. 101 

passage may be considered as the text of the present 
article, my object being to lay before the public, and 
I may confidently say for the first time, a full and 
true narrative as to what for convenience I shall style 
"Jackson's January letter." Parton, in his "Life 
of Andrew Jackson," follows Benton; and Benton, 
in preparing his "Thirty Years' View," was misled 
— honestly, no doubt — by a lengthy document on 
the subject of the Seminole War wliich he found 
among Andrew Jackson's postliumous papers, but 
whose publication Jackson himself never positively 

by his victory, General Gaiues pursues the fugitives, aud has to lialt 
before the garrison until he can conimuuicate with iiis government. 
In the meantime the militia grow restless, and he is left to defend 
himself by the regulars. The enemy, with the aid of their Spanish 
friends and Woodbine's British partisans, or, if you please, with 
Aury's force, attacks him. What may not be the result ? Defeat 
and massacre. Permit me to remark that the arms of the United 
States must be carried to any point within the limits of East Florida, 
where an enemy is permitted and protected, or disgrace attends. 

The executive government have ordered, and, as I conceive, very 
properly, Amelia Island to be taken possession of. This order ought 
to be carried into execution at all hazards, and simultaneously the 
whole of East Florida seized, and held as an indemnity for the out- 
rages of Spain upon the property of our citizens. This done, it puts 
all opposition down, secures our citizens a complete indemnity, and 
saves us from a war with Great Britain, or some of the continental 
powers combined with Spain. This can be done without implicating 
the government. Let it be siynijied to me through anij channel (saij 
^[r. J. Rhea), that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to 
the United States, and in sixti/ days it will be accomplished. 

The order being given for the possession of Amelia Island, it 
ought to be executed, or our enemies, internal and external, Avill use 
it to the disadvantage of the government. If our troops enter the 
territory of Spain in pursuit of our Indian enemy, all opposition that 
they meet with must be put down, or we will be involved iu danger 
and .disgrace. 

I have the honor, &c., 

Andrew Jacksox. 
Hon. J.\mes Monroe, 

President United States. 



102 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

sanctioned. Parton, if not Benton himself, has been 
puzzled by the mysteries involved in that January 
letter. Those mysteries, however, are solved in part 
by the later published volumes of that most valuable 
historical work, John Quincy Adams's "Diarj^," 
though no one, I believe, has called attention to the 
point; and they are essentially cleared by the testi- 
mony of the Monroe manuscripts now in possession 
of the government, and of the Gouverneur papers 
which are still held in Washington by the last of 
Monroe's lineal descendants. I believe I violate no 
confidence in using the substance of their contents 
for the purpose of this narrative, in connection with 
the publications I have referred to, well knowing 
that the American people value truth and justice in 
history, and that they would not willingly suffer false 
imputations to tarnish the fame of an honored Presi- 
dent, who has reposed more than fifty years in the 
grave. 

Jackson's January letter, it is perceived, indicates 
on the general's part a personal wish to carry the 
war into Spain precisely as he afterwards did. Heed- 
less, perhaps, of the duplicity, of the lawlessness to 
which such a course must have committed the respon- 
sible Executive of the United States, Jackson urged 
Monroe to drop only a sly hint, and in sixty days the 
Floridas would be ours. The secret channel indicated 
was through John Rhea, better known to statesmen of 
the day as "Johnny Rhea," — a member of Congress 
for many years from Tennessee, a native of Ireland, 
a man never of much reputation, who is remembered 
in history only as one of Jackson's constant parasites. 
It is well known that this January letter was written 
from Nashville before Jackson had received the 
marching orders which were already on their way to 



MONROE AND THE RHEA LETTER. 103 

him from Washington, and in ignorance of their 
contents. Those orders directed him to proceed to 
the scene of war and take command, observing the 
restrictions already imj)osed on his predecessor, 
General Gaines, — restrictions of whose import Jack- 
son's own letter shows that he was already apprised. 
In other words, Jackson might cross the Florida line, 
provided the hostile Indians could be reached and 
punished in no other way; but on no account was he 
to molest or threaten a Spanish post ; and should the 
enemy find refuge within a Spanish fortress, he was 
to relinquish the pursuit and take no further steps 
without receiving new and explicit orders from the 
war department.^ 

Jackson was resolute, headstrong, self-reliant, dis- 
inclined to obey orders from any one, strongly per- 
sistent in his own views, and by no means considerate 
toward those he fought or argued against. Monroe, 
on the other hand, was at this epoch, as all accounts 
agree, patient, tolerant, slow in reaching conclusions, 
but magnanimous and considerate, — an Executive 
who both sought counsel and encouraged the confi- 
dence of his counsellors ; a chief magistrate who took 
just and comj)rehensive views of public policy, who 
was sensitive that all his official acts should be rightly 
performed, and as a man the soul of generous honor. 
What impression would such a private letter from a 
commanding general have been likely to produce 
upon the mind of such a President, under circum- 
stances like these ? Much the same, we may imagine, 
as McClellan's famous letter on the slavery question, 
written while engaged in his Peninsular campaign, 
produced upon President Lincoln's mind. The gen- 
eral had meantime received his military orders and 
1 See 2 Parton's Jackson, 433. 



104 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

was bound to pursue tliera; consequently, personal 
advice on delicate questions of a political character, 
whose tendency was to compromise the Chief Execu- 
tive, would be weighed but not discussed by the 
latter at such a juncture. In truth, free advice from 
Jackson was nothing new to Monroe; he had been 
receiving it ever since his election to the presidency ; 
and, appreciating Jackson's friendship as well as the 
originality and force of all he might say, he had con- 
stantly encouraged him to speak his mind freely, but 
at the same time pursued the tenor of his administra- 
tion after his own deliberate convictions. 

In point of fact, however, Monroe never read nor 
reflected upon Jackson's January letter at all until 
after Pensacola had fallen. This will conclusively 
appear in the course of the present narrative. 

For historical facts one should trust most of all to 
contemporary testimony. Later narratives, solely 
derived from personal recollection, are not- to be 
depended upon ; for not only do events fade from the 
memory after a long lapse of years, but they are 
grouped differently as viewed in the prospect or the 
retrospect; important links may in time have disap- 
peared, while the bias of the narrator must be to 
make the sequence of anticipation coincide with that 
of actual results, — a state of things which rarely 
occurs in real life. Let any one who doubts this tell 
from memory the story of his own personal experi- 
ences, dating ten or fifteen years back, describing the 
time, the persons, the surroundings, and the impres- 
sions he received, and then compare this story with 
the details recorded l)y him in some letter or note- 
book when all was fresh in the mind. Nothing, then, 
which admits us to the inner secrets of the Monroe 
administration upon the Seminole question can be so 



MONROE AND THE RHEA LETTER. 105 

trustwortliy as the correspondence in 1818 of the 
parties concerned and John Quincy Adams's scrupu- 
lous Diary. 

As Adams himself, Monroe's Secretary of State, 
while thoroughly conscientious, was a keen and 
unsparing critic of his political associates and chief- 
tain, in what he thus jotted down, and at the present 
juncture the only one of them all who showed a dis- 
position to sustain Jackson's conduct to the utmost, 
we may trust his recorded impressions as not too 
indulgent toward the administration. His minutes 
of the Seminole discussions show clearly enough that 
the capture of Pensacola was an entire surprise to 
the Cabinet, Calhoun included, and to the President, 
who had summoned them for counsel. The question 
for consultation here was not (as Jackson, long years 
after, chose to believe) whether to punish the general 
commanding for disobedience, but whether to approve 
or disapprove of his proceedings. Not only did 
Monroe state the capture as a breach of orders, but 
the news of Pensacola's surrender came at the very 
moment when, under the favor of the French minister 
at Washington, negotiations with Spain for the pur- 
chase of Florida had been taken up anew, with fresh 
hopes of success. Despatches relating to the execu- 
tion of Arbuthnot and Ambrister had miscarried, and 
hence the full scope of Jackson's conduct did not yet 
appear ; but, as to the Spanish posts, all the Cabinet 
finally concurred in the conclusion that their capture 
must be disavowed as having been made without 
authority. The President generously admitted that 
there might be justification for taking Pensacola 
under some circumstances, but that Jackson had not 
made out his case. 

Adams gives further incidental proof of the Presi- 



106 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

dent's good faith. He says tliat, while candid and 
good-humored as to all that he, the Secretary of 
State, had suggested in Jackson's favor, Monroe was 
firm on the main conclusion. And once more, in 
November, 1818, Adams records in his Diary that 
when revising the draft of the official despatch, in 
which, as it is well known, the Secretary of State 
made, for European impression as against Spain, a 
most brilliant and successful defence of the adminis- 
tration policy, Monroe altered the document, sa;)T.ng: 
" You have gone too far in justifying Jackson's acts 
in Florida." "I am decidedly of opinion," was his 
recorded substance of the President's comment, " that 
these proceedings have been attended with good 
results and are in the main justifiable ; but that cer- 
tainly they were not contemplated in any of the 
instructions issued to Jackson. I think the public 
will not entirely justify the general; and the true 
course for ourselves is to shield and support him as 
much as possible, but not commit the administration 
on points where the public will be against us." 
Adams, who felt the force of the criticism, observes 
in his Diary that this view of the case is wise, just, 
and generous. 1 

Monroe's whole course toward Jackson, indeed, 
corresponded with this same ^vise and generous view 
of his public duty. Had he made Jackson's rule of 
conduct his own in this instance, there might have 
been war with the allied powers of Europe, and, what 
was worse, American diplomacy must have been 
stigmatized as perfidious. But, making all allow- 
ance for Jackson's idiosyncrasies, Monroe candidly 
acknowledged the positive service Jackson rendered, 
as events turned out; and positive proofs of a con- 

^ See 4 John Quincy Adams's Diary (1818). 



MONROE AND THE RHEA LETTER. 107 

tinned confidence were given soon after, as when, for 
instance, he commissioned Jackson to receive the 
cession of the Floridas from the Spanish authorities 
after the treaty with Spain had been ratified. 

In his message, on the reassembhng of Congress, 
Monroe states the official facts clearly, but consider- 
ately.^ ]\lonroe's most confidential correspondence 
of this date with his own friends is consistent with 
the same theory. To Madison (whom he constantly 
consulted on all the great points of his administra- 
tion), he wrote, February 7, 1819, while the Seminole 
debates were progressing in the House, that every- 
thing not already communicated to him was before 
the country; and, reciting the policy pursued on the 
receipt of Jackson's Pensacola despatches, and the 
justice done to Spain by restoring the posts, he pro- 
ceeds to blame the Spanish authorities themselves for 
conniving at or permitting the Seminole hostilities, 
and to defend himself in not punishing Jackson " for 
his mistake." 2 Monroe wrote, March 17, 1819, to 
Minister Rush in a similar strain after the Florida 
treaty had been concluded at Washington.^ 

But how was the delicate affair managed with 

1 In this message the President observes that only by returning 
these posts were amicable relations preserved with Spain, and that for 
dianging those relations Congress and not the Executive has the power, — 
Annual Message, November 17, 1818. 

2 Madison's Writings (1819); Monroe MSS. 

3 " The right to make war," says Monroe, " was not only not 
assumed by the Executive, but explicitly disclaimed. The General 
transcended his orders, but that was no breach of the Constitution ; he 
chastised all those as well in secret as open hostility to the United 
States. But as soon as the orders of the Government reached him 
and those under him, a prompt obedience followed." And Monroe 
further observes (once more defending himself for not censuring 
Jackson), that had he censured our commander and exculpated the 
Spanish authorities in Florida, the cession just made would not have 
been procured. — Monroe MSS. 



108 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

Jackson himself, so as to soothe an insubordinate 
commander while reversing his acts ? Most skilf ullj^, 
as the correspondence to be found in Parton's Life 
will show, and with an obvious endeavor on Monroe's 
part to assure the general of his personal sympathy 
and at the same time point out his breach of official 
orders. This correspondence, which was carried on 
after Jackson's return from Florida to Nashville, and 
extended from July to December, 1818, shows that 
Jaclison merely claimed to construe his orders differ- 
ently from the War Department, arguing that they 
gave him a broad discretion. And Parton, who relies 
upon the hypothesis (whose origin will be noticed at 
length hereafter) that Monroe had actually sent 
Jackson some secret sanction through Rhea, in 
response to Jackson's January letter, confesses his 
own surprise that these epistles should have contained 
no allusion to that subject. ^ There is, however, not 
only an allusion here, but a full explanation as to the 
receipt of the January letter, wliich Parton has either 
overlooked or intentionally perverts: namely, in the 
last of the series, Monroe's response of December 21, 
1818, to Jackson's of November. Monroe says at 
the close of that response : " On one circumstance it 
seems proper that I should now give you an explana- 
tion. Your letter of January 6 was received when I 
was seriously indisposed. Observing that it was 
from you, I handed it to Mr. Calhoun to read, after 
reading one or two lines only myself. The order to 
you to take command in that quarter had before then 
been issued. He remarked, after perusing the letter, 
that it was a confidential one, relating to Florida, 
which I must answer. I asked him if he had forwarded 
to you the orders of General Gaines on that subject. 

1 Tarton's Life of Jackson, 518-528. 



MONROE AND THE RHEA LETTER. 109 

He replied that he had. Your letter to me, with 
many others from friends, was put aside in conse- 
quence of my indisposition and the great pressure on 
me at the time, and never recurred to until after 
my return from Loudoun, on receipt of yours by 
Mr. Hambly, and then on the suggestion of Mr. 
Calhoun."'! 

Here, then, is a complete explanation on Monroe's 
part, contemporaneous with the events, as to the 
effect of Jackson's January letter, and, so far as 
history is aware, it satisfied Jackson, for he made no 
rejoinder nor ceased to cultivate Monroe's friendship. 
But why did Monroe volunteer this explanation, 
considering that Jackson's letter of November, to 
which it responded, made no direct allusion to the 
subject? Possibly there was the barest hint in that 
direction in the November letter, though Parton him- 
self fails to discover it. A chance passage in John 
Quincy Adams's Diary will, I think, if taken in con- 
nection with Crawford's later assertions, supply the 
reason. "At the President's [notes Adams, of date 
December 17, 1818] I met Secretary Crawford, who 
was reading to him a violent attack upon himself in 
a letter from Nashville, published in the 'Aurora ' of 
the day before yesterday. "2 Crawford, recalling the 

1 For this letter of December 21, 1818, in full, and those preceding, 
see Monroe MSS. ; also " Correspondence relating to the Seminole 
War," prepared by Calhoun, and printed at Wasliington in 1831, 
where the date is incorrectly given as "1830," instead of "1818," — 
an obvious misprint, as the context alone might show. This letter is 
strangely garbled and misplaced in Parton's Life of Jackson, Vol. II., 
pp. 434, 5:27. 

"Loudoun " refers to Monroe's Virginia home, and, as John Quincy 
Adams after\var<l pointed out, it was Hamlily who brought the Pen- 
sacola des])atches upon which the Cabinet consultations were held, so 
that tlie allusion of the text is to Hambly's arrival in July, 1818. 
'^ John Quincy Adams's Diary. 



110 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

same circumstances to Monroe's mind, in 1830, states 
that they both agreed in this interview that the essay 
had been written either under Jackson's direction or 
by some one who had access to Jackson's confidential 
papers.^ And to that conclusion the candid reader 
Avill arrive if he examines, as this writer has done, 
the files of the "Aurora" for December 15, 1818, 
and reads that Nashville letter. In the course of it, 
the unknown writer, "B. B.," observes that the gov- 
ernment knew the general's views upon the capture 
of the Spanish forts before he marched his army into 
Florida ; and if this be so, he adds, why, if those did 
not meet their own views, were not specific orders to 
the contrary given him?^ This anonymous inquiry 
in the public prints touched INIonroe; and hence, as 
we infer, his explanation to Jackson, made but a few 
days later, and the only one ever given, which the 
long record of Monroe's administration discloses. 

Years rolled on, and the Seminole controversy 
slumbered. Monroe's long administration closed with 
applause. Among the numerous candidates in 1824 
for the succession no choice was made by the electors, 
and the duty of a selection having devolved upon the 
House of Representatives, John Quincy Adams 
became the next President. But so formidable a 
coalition was presently made of Jackson's supported 
that they soon gained the full control of Congress, 
blocked all administration measures, and pi*epared 
the way for an easy victory in 1828. In these politi- 
cal arrangements, Calhoun, already Vice-President, 
shifted his forces to Jackson, whose friends in turn 

1 Crawford's lapse of memory is to be uotcd ; he called it " an essay 
in a Nashville paper." 

2 " Aurora" (Philadelphia), December 15, 1818. Observe that tliis 
epistle argues that to the January letter of Jackson no reply was ever 
given. 



MONROE AND THE RHEA LETTER. Ill 

agreed to support him for re-election on the Demo- 
cratic ticket. In this state of affairs an old feud 
between Calhoun and Crawford broke out afresh in 
1827 ; the friends of the latter now seeking to embroil 
their adversary with Jackson by charging him with 
duplicity in the old Seminole business. Appeal was 
made to ex-President Monroe for the facts; and 
among other issues of veracity raised between Cal- 
houn and Crawford was that concerning the re- 
ception and use made of Jackson's January letter. 
Monroe transmitted his private correspondence for 
Calhoun to use strictly in his own justification ; and 
at the same time perceiving, as he thought, a grow- 
ing disposition on the part of Jackson's friends to 
pervert facts and rob the Virginia statesmen of merited 
honors for their own hero's glory, he recalled, with no 
little feeling, the generous interest he had always 
shown in Jackson's welfare. As for Jackson's 
January letter, Monroe here reiterated the explana- 
tion of 1818. "I solemnly declare," he writes 
Calhoun, "that I never read that letter until after 
the affair was concluded ; nor did I ever think of it 
until you recalled it to my recollection by an intima- 
tion of its contents and a suggestion that it had also 
been read by Crawford, who had mentioned it to 
some person who might be disposed to turn it to 
some account." ^ 

A further statement in this same confidential letter 
becomes of startling importance. " I asked ]\Ir. Rhea 
in a conversation," proceeds Monroe, "whether he 
had ever intimated to General Jackson his opinion 
that the administration had no objection to his mak- 
ing an attack on Pensacola, and he declared that he 
never had. I did not know, if the general had 

1 Monroe MSS., January 28, 1827. 



112 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

written him to the same effect as he had to me, as I 
had not read my letter, but that he might have led 
me innocently into a conversation in which, vvdshing to 
obtain Florida, I might have expressed a sentiment 
from which he might have drawn that inference. But 
he assured me that no such conversation ever passed 
between us. I did not apprise him of the letter 
which I had received from the general on the subject, 
being able to ascertain my object without doing so."^ 

Efforts were made, during the bitter campaign of 
1828, to draw Monroe from his retirement; but he 
maintained in honor the strictest neutrality as between 
the candidates just as he had done in 1824. He 
rejected overtures from Adams's supporters to place 
him on their ticket as Vice-President; and both he and 
Madison refused to serve when selected to head the 
Virginia list of presidential electors on that ticket. 

It is known that Monroe, like Jefferson, while above 
suspicion in all public pecuniary transactions, retired 
from the presidential office, weighed down with 
private debts, and that his last declining years were 
harassed with the humiliating struggles of j)ride and 
poverty. A claim pending before Congress after his 
retirement promised him, or rather his creditors, a 
partial relief; and meanwhile President Adams, with 
a tender consideration for his late chief, appointed 
JNIonroe's son-in-law, Samuel L. Gouverneur, post- 
master of New York City, — a vacancy having occurred 
in the office by death, — in the expectation that some 
a tl vantage would accrue from the office to Monroe 
personally. This, however, was not until the presi- 
dential contest of 1828 was settled, and that adversely, 
of course, to Adams himself. After Jackson came 
into the White House there was a vigorous proscrip- 

1 Monroe MSS. January 28, 1827. 



MONROE AND THE RHEA LETTER. 113 

tion among the officeholders ; and Monroe saw with 
sorrow that the proscription extended to men long 
attached to himself in friendship and confidence. 
Jackson gave no direct proof that he had construed 
Monroe's neutrality to his prejudice; yet symptoms 
of this appeared. Early in 1831 the breach between 
Crawford and Calhoun became open; the latter, 
still Vice-President, had been expelled from the con- 
fidence of the administration, and the issues of the 
Seminole War burned fiercely in the public prints. 
Both Crawford and Calhoun turned once more to 
Monroe and to their Cabinet associates under his 
presidency for testimony to corroborate their respec- 
tive statements. 

With regard to Jackson's January letter a curious 
issue had now arisen. Crawford charged Calhoun 
with suppressing knowledge of its contents. Calhoun 
claimed in return that Crawford had purloined that 
letter from the War Department. Crawford insisted 
that the letter had been read in the Cabinet consulta- 
tions of 1818 upon the fall of Pensacola; Calhoun, 
that it never was before the Cabinet at all. On this 
latter point Calhoun was doul^tless right; for Monroe, 
Wirt, and Adams all sustained him, the last-named 
having his own Diary to refresh his recollections; 
and, indeed, the January letter now produced was to 
Wirt and Adams a new revelation. But Crawford, 
like Calhoun, appears to be fairly absolved from the 
imputation of falsehood in this matter, for Monroe 
was of the belief that both Calhoun and Crawford 
had been shown the letter; and Adams, comparing 
the several statements of this date with Monroe's 
explanation of December, 1818, suggested, fairly 
enough, that while the January letter was certainly 
not before the Cabinet at all when the Seminole q^ues- 

8 



114 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

tions were discussed, it might have heen produced 
about that time, while only Crawford and Calhoun 
were with the President.^ 

By April, 1831, a partial allowance of Monroe's 
claim had been voted by Congress. The venerable 
ex-President was fast failing in health and spirits. 
His wife, whom he dearly loved, had recently died, 
also one of his two sons-in-law. He was troubled 
■with a constant cough from which he could procure 
no relief. The solitude of his farm was insupport- 
able, nor might he call the ancestral acres his own. 
He announced to jMadison the intention of taking his 
widowed daughter with him to New York, there to 
remain for the present with the family of his other 
child, Mrs. Gouverneur. " My situation," he wrote in 
a letter of farewell to his life-long friend, "prescribes 
my course, and I deeply regret that there is no pros- 
pect I will ever see you again." It was not long 
after this departure that ex-President Adams, while 
passing through New York, found his illustrious 
predecessor confined to his sick chamber, extremely 
feeble and emaciated, and so exhausted by the exer- 
tion of speaking that Adams dared not protract t)ie 
call, though he felt it to be a final one.^ 

While jNIonroe was thus suffering, a strange letter 
arrived at the house of his son-in-law, now installed 
as the ex-President's confidential secretary and the 
chosen custodian of his papers. Even to this day, 
that letter, deliberately composed and appearing to 
have been carefully copied out, bristles with hate 
and defiance, every line resembling a row of rattle- 
snakes. It is written and signed by John Rhea. It 
asks Monroe whether he received a confidential letter 

1 Monroe MSS. ; John Quincy Adams's Diary, 1818, 1831. 

2 John Quincy Adams's Diary, April 27, 1831 ; Monroe MSS. 



MONROE AND THE RHEA LETTER. 115 

from Andrew Jackson, dated January 6, 1818. After 
identifying that letter it thus continues: "I had 
many confidential conversations with you respecting 
General Jackson at that period. You communicated 
to me that confidential letter, or its substance, 
approved the opinion of Jackson therein expressed, 
and did authorize me to write to him. I did accord- 
ingly write to him. He says he received my letter 
on his way to Fort Scott, and acted accordingly. 
After that war a question was raised in your Cabinet 
as to General Jackson's authority, and that question 
was got over. I know that General Jackson was in 
Washington in January, 1819, and my confidential 
letter was probably in his possession. You requested 
me to request General Jackson to burn that letter, in 
consequence of which I asked General Jackson, and 
he promised to do so. He has since informed me 
that April 12, 1819, he did burn it." Rhea closed 
with the request for a reply. 

This letter, containing statements so utterly at 
variance with all that had ever been said or written 
hitherto upon the Seminole War, was opened by 
Gouverneur. Monroe had for weeks been confined 
to his bed, and those attending him had found it 
absolutely necessary to keep his mind free from all 
excitement or anxiety. In his astonishment and 
perplexity, the son-in-law consulted Wirt, the trusted 
legal adviser of former administrations. Wirt, agree- 
ing with him that Rhea's story was not only utterly 
false, but invented for some hidden political purpose, 
urged that Monroe's solemn statement be procured. 
Gouverneur followed this advice; and accordingly 
on the 19th of June, 1831, the ex-President made 
his deposition in presence of witnesses, signing his 
familiar name firmly and legibly at the close. As to 



116 HISTORICAL BHIEFS. 

this Rliea letter shown him for the first time, and of 
which he never before had an intimation, ]\Ionroe 
decLares on oath: (1) That it is utterly unfounded 
and untrue that he ever authorized John Rhea to 
write any letter authorizing Andrew Jackson to 
deviate from or disobey the orders sent him through 
the War Department; (2) That it is utterly untrue 
that he ever desired John Rhea to request Andrew 
Jackson to destroy any letter written by him to 
General Jackson. 

This document is still extant, and I have read it 
with no little emotion. It is probably the last of 
State papers, if I may use that expression, which 
Monroe ever subscribed ; and what must have passed 
thiough his mind, as to the vanity of fame and friend- 
ship, while his pen glided over the paper, the reader 
may imagine. On the ensuing 4th of July INlonroe 
was dead; and with his death the Seminole contro- 
versy suddenly subsided. Whether the affair was 
dropped because this triangular quarrel between 
Jackson, Calhoun, and Crawford had ended in a 
permanent rupture of relations, or because the public 
would hear no more of it, or possibly because the 
administration and President Jackson personally had 
learned from some source that there was a statement 
made in extremis which might be forthcoming, histoiy 
does not record. But it may now be positively 
affirmed that Monroe's most intimate friends were 
informed confidentially of this deposition, and that 
one of them at least — John Quincy Adams — has left 
on record an opinion as to the Rhea letter expressed 
in language sufficiently clear and vehement. ^ 

^ See John Quincy Adams's Diary, August 30, 1831. "There is a 
depth of depravity in this transaction," observes Adams, " at which 
the heart sickens." See further comments, etc. 



MONROE AND THE RHEA LETTER. Ill 

No exigency ever arose for the production of 
Monroe's deposition while either Rhea or Gouverneur 
lived. Jackson, triumphant over all political foes, 
furnished no material for reviving the dispute. But, 
long after Jackson's death, Benton found among some 
chests containing Jackson's private papers, which 
were then and are still in the custody of the Blair 
family at Washington, a lengthy document which 
purported to contain an exposition of Jackson's 
conduct in the Seminole War from Jackson's own 
standpoint. This document, prepared evidently for 
publication in the heat of the Calhoun controversy 
in 1831, had for some reason been suppressed, or at 
least withheld from the public. Being then engaged 
in preparing liis "Thirty Years' View," which was 
published about 1854, Benton made free use of it. 
As a chronicler he set the narrative forth at much 
length; and as a long-devoted partisan of General 
Jackson, and one moreover having slight personal 
knowledge of the whole affair, he accepted its allega- 
tions with no real effort to discriminate. But the 
careful critic must perceive tliat the document is 
not greatly to be trusted. The writing, as Benton 
observes, is that of some clerk, in a fair, round hand, 
with slight interlineations by the general, and the 
expression is sometimes in the third person and some- 
times in the first. Plainly enough, the story is long 
and loosely put together, with hasty transitions from 
narrative to argument, with ad captandum thrusts, 
with assertions equally positive whether facts are 
alleged as of Jackson's personal knowledge or upon 
mere hearsay; its main purpose is to put Calhoun 
in the wrong and convict him of duplicity, and its 
whole strain is passionate and bitter. Though bear- 
ing Jackson's signature at the end, it is not sworn 



118 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

to; page after page might have been interpolated 
by a scribe ; and finally there is no proof that Jackson 
himself ever finally accepted it as fit for publication, 
but rather the reverse.^ 

In this document appears a statement as to the 
Jackson January letter which singularly fits into 
Rhea's mysterious epistle of 1831. It alleges that 
while Jackson and Rhea were in Washington, during 
the winter of 1819 (or at the time of the Seminole 
debates), Rhea called on Jackson, as he said at the 
request of Monroe, and begged him on his return 
home to burn the letter authorizing the capture of 
the Spanish posts which Rhea had written Jackson in 
1818. Jackson, it adds, gave Rhea the promise thus 
solicited; and accordingly, after his return to Nash- 
ville, he burnt Rhea's letter, and on his letter-book, 
opposite the copy of his January letter to Monroe, 
made this entry: "Mr. Rhea's letter in answer is 
burnt this 12th April, 1819. "2 

1 See Benton's Thirty Years' View, Vol. I., p. 168 et seq. 

2 1 Benton's Thirty Years' View, 168 et seq. This is the statement 
borrowed by Parton, to which allusion has already been made in this 
article, supra, p. 101. If it were needful, much might be said to dis- 
credit such a story. From the Jackson statement one gathers the 
impression that Rhea's letter, being already in Nashville, was burnt 
by Jackson at the first opportunity. But Rhea's letter to Monroe in 
1831 supposes rather that Jackson had the letter with him while in 
Washington, which is the more consistent. The general had come 
all the way from Nashville to Washington, in order to produce his 
papers and justify himself l)efore a Congressional committee ; and is 
it to be supposed tliat a letter so material to his defence, if it existed 
at all, and he had relied upon it, would have been left behind ? And 
if he had that letter with him, why, iu utter disregard of the reasons 
which the Benton document puts forward so sedulously, should Jack- 
son have so long deferred desti-oying it, when it was so easy to relieve 
Rhea of embarrassment by returning the letter or burning it before 
his eyes on the spot ? Again, it is certain that Jackson saw the Presi- 
deiit and Secretary of War frequently, wliile on this visit to Washing- 
ton, and that he was on the most cordial terms with both of them. 



MONROE AND THE RHEA LETTER. 119 

Monroe's owii connection with Jackson's January 
letter has now, I think, been amply exphiined. And 
as for that Rhea letter, wliich, it is claimed, Andrew 
Jackson burnt at Rhea's request, only one of two 
theories appears tenable: (1) That Rhea imposed 
upon Jackson in the Florida business a pretended 
authority which the President never gave him, — a 
situation which might well explain his anxiety in 
1819 that his letter to Jackson should be destroyed; 
(2) That the whole story was fabricated, in or about 
1831, by Rhea and others in Jackson's confidence, for 
some political purpose, in connection with the Calhoun 
disclosures, which they did not see fit to press. The 
latter hypothesis, I regret, for Jackson's sake, to say, 
appears altogether the more probable; and that 
hypothesis Wirt and John Quincy Adams accepted, 
— men most competent to judge, and not more dis- 
posed to favor Calhoun than Jackson. 

One word as to the private papers of Jackson to 
which I have alluded. Since the recent death of 
Hon. Montgomery Blair, these papers have been held 
by his executors, who intimate an intention to arrange 
them for publication. Congress, on the other hand, 
at the instance of Jackson's surviving relatives, is 
considering the propriety of purchasing them. In 
the 'interest of our national history, I trust that the 
question of title to these important documents will 
soon be settled, so that they may be opened to the 

Why, then, should one of the general's astuteness have acted thus 
upon Rhea's oral request, unsupported by proof that tlie request came 
from the President, and without a suspicion of Rhea's motives in 
making it ? And, once more, as Parton himself has suggested, is it 
not singular that, while we are told that Rhea's letter to Jackson was 
burnt, neither Rhea nor Jackson has pretended to state what was its 
substance, what the dates of Rhea's interview with Monroe, what the 
terms of the supposed authority, or any other details ? 



120 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

inspection of historical scholars and investigators, if 
not to the general public. I shall be glad to learn 
whether the Jackson papers throw any light upon the 
purposes which this falsehood about Rhea's backstairs 
mission — for falsehood it certainly was — was meant 
to subserve. 



PRESIDENT POLK'S DIARY. 

In tlie Lenox Library of New York City may be 
seen tbe literary relics of the late George Bancroft, 
which that institution purchased in 1893 from the 
executors of his estate, after Congress had delayed 
action upon their offer of the whole undivided col- 
lection to the United States government at an 
appraised value of ^75,000, under a provision of the 
historian's will. The price paid privately was nearly 
ten thousand dollars more than that asked from the 
public; the entire collection numbering, in books, 
pamphlets, and manuscripts, about twenty thousand 
volumes. 

Among the richest treasures of this collection, as 
well as its latest important accession during Mr. 
Bancroft's life, should be reckoned the private papers 
and correspondence of President James K. Polk; or 
rather, we should say, type-written copies of the 
original manuscripts, which were prepared under the 
venerable author's immediate supervision, and bound 
up, after careful verification, in handsome volumes 
of half- turkey morocco with gilt-letter titles. Mr. 
Bancroft, as the last survivor of a Cabinet and an 
administration whose policy was in many respects 
profound and far-reaching, suddenly conceived, at 
the age of eight}^-six, the purpose of making an 
authentic and complete narrative of that political 

Keprinted from Atlantic Monthly, August, 1895. 



122 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

term; and accordingly, after writing to Nashville in 
April, 1887, he visited Mr. Polk's widow, a,nd 
obtained full j)ermission to take to his own home the 
mass of papers which had remained undisturbed as 
the ex-President left them at his death, nearly forty 
years earlier, and to make such use of them as he 
might deem fit. The scholar pursued his task with 
ardor, so far as to prepare and arrange the desired 
materials, a labor most congenial and easy to one of 
his long experience; he felfc the first glow of this new 
literary undertaking, which was sure to bring liidden 
testimony to light. But his remarkable intellect and 
trained habits of industry were not equal, at so late 
an age, to the creative task of composition ; his health 
declined, and on the 17th of January, 1891, he died. 
This final service of our historical sage in the interest 
of American past politics was a distinct and valuable 
one, but it was that of compiler, rather than of histo- 
rian. He has, however, left on record the impres- 
sions made on his own mind by the j)erusal of the 
manuscript. "Polk's character shines out in these 
papers," he writes, "just exactly as the man was, — - 
prudent, far-sighted, bold, exceeding any Democrat 
of his day in his undeviatingly correct exposition of 
Democratic principles." 

Unquestionably, the chief historical value of the 
Polk collection consists in the twenty-four volumes 
of INlr. Polk's Diary, kept during nearly the whole 
term of his presidency; each volume averaging about 
a hundred type-written pages in the large octavo 
which Mr. Bancroft used. It must be a surprise to 
most of our fellow-countrymen to learn that another 
President besides John Quincy Adams kept an exten- 
sive journal while in office; and especially that an 
Executive so absorbed in difficult details as Mr. Polk 



PRESIDENT POLK'S DIARY. 123 

should have found time to record his impressions 
from day to day at such great length, and with so 
obvious a determination to be exact and comprehen- 
sive. Such an enterprise steadily pursued, and with 
no full opportunity to change or suppress what at the 
time was written, reveals not only facts essential to a 
correct understanding of public actions, but, more 
unconsciously, the mental cast and political bias of 
the writer. Like his more erudite predecessor, Polk 
cherished — and probably with greater zeal — the pur- 
pose of vindicating some day his secret political 
motives and his public relations with other men; but 
his premature death, very soon after his four years' 
term had expired, left the Diary unrevised as its own 
expositor, an inner fountain of information unadorned. 
No two Presidents could have been more at the antip- 
odes than were Polk and John Quincy Adams in 
political affiliations and designs. Yet each, after his 
peculiar fashion, was honest, inflexible in purpose, 
and pursuant of the country's good; and both have 
revealed views singularly alike — the one as a scholar, 
the other as a sage and sensible observer — of the 
selfish, ignoble, and antagonistic influences which 
surge about the citadel of national patronage, and 
beset each supreme occupant of the White House. 

President Polk has stated the circumstances under 
which he commenced his Diary. On the 26th of 
August, 1845, he held with his Secretary of State, 
James Buchanan, an important conversation over the 
Oregon troubles, which he reduced at once to writ- 
ing; and after reflecting upon this narrative in his 
own solitude, he detennined to open a diary at once 
and continue the plan. Next day he procured a 
blank book, with this purpose in view, and began 
his entries regularl}', concluding to make them longer 



124 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

or shorter as convenience and the events worth record- 
ing might deterniine. The conversation of Angust 
26, however, he did not again transcribe, but left the 
written slieets separate, beginning his book on the 
2Ttli. The journal thus commenced he continued 
from day to day for the remainder of his remarlvable 
term, which lasted from March 4, 1845, to March 4, 
1849. Leaving office, feeble and in failing health, 
on the latter date, he died in the middle of the 
following June. 
r Whatever may be thought of Mr. Polk's official 

course in despoiling jNIexico for the aggrandizement 
of his own country, one camiot read this Diary 
carefully without an increased respect for his simple 
and sturdy traits of character, his inflexible honesty 
in financial concerns, and the pertinacious zeal and 
strong sagacity which characterized his whole presi- 
dential career. Making all due allowance for any 
personal selfishness which might color his narrative, 
we now perceive clearly that he was the framer of 
that public policy which he carried into so successful 
execution, and that instead of being led (as many 
might have imagined) by the more famous statesmen 
of his administration and party wdio surrounded him, 
he in reality led and shaped his own executive course ; 
disclosing in advance to his familiar Cabinet such 
part as he thought best to make known, while con- 
cealing the rest. Both Bancroft and Buchanan, of 
his official advisers, have left on record, since his 
death, incidental tributes to his greatness as an 
administrator and unifier of executive action; both 
admitting in effect his superior force of will and 
comprehension of the best practical methods for 
attaining his far-reaching ends. On the other hand, 
while the Diary shows that Mr. Polk held the one 



PRESIDENT POLK'S DIARY. li'o 

Secretary in high esteem, it is plain that he appreciated 
the many weaknesses of the other, with whom he had 
frequent differences of opinion, which in these secret 
pages elicit his own sharp comment. In fact, the 
Secretary of State, whom he repeatedly overruled, 
felt, for the first sixteen months, at least, of this 
executive term, so much dissatisfied with various 
features of Polk's policy, and in particular, like others 
of Pennsylvania, so discontented w4th the famous low 
tariff measure which Polk was hent upon carrying, 
that in the summer of 1846 he arranged definitely 
to retire from the Cabinet, to accept a jNIiddle State 
vacancy on the supreme bench, which the President 
promised him ; though with an overruling discretion 
deferring the appointment until the new tariff act 
was out of jeopardy at the Capitol, when Buchanan 
himself at last concluded to remain where he was. 
Buchanan's presidential aspirations, notwithstanding 
a condition exacted by the President from all who 
entered the administration, that they should cease to 
aspire so long as they sat at his council board, 
annoj^ed him much as time went on. " He is selfish," 
says the Diary in March, 1848, " and controlled so 
much by wishes for his own advancement that I 
cannot trust his advice on a public question ; yet it is 
hazardous to dismiss, and I have borne with him." 
And on another occasion Polk records, after repeatedl}^ 
finding his Secretary timid, over-anxious, and dis- 
posed too much to forestall OA^ertures from others 
which the administration knew were due and were 
sure to come, " Mr. Buchanan is an able man, but is 
in small matters without judgment, and sometimes 
acts like an old maid." /^ 

All hasty diarists are likely to repeat themselves ; 
and no idea does Mr. Polk's Diary repeat so fre- 



126 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

quently as that of disgust with the constant pressure 
for office which our chief magistrate encounters. It 
is the same phase of human nature which John 
Quincy Adams beheld with a like antipathy, though 
with a more dogged determination not to jdeld to 
such importunity. President Polk delineates his 
toraientors in the shape of callers at the White 
House as they may still be seen : some to seek office, 
others to beg money, and others still to pay, or 
profess to pay, their respects. "A year gone," 
records the Diary, March 4, 1846, "and the pressure 
for office has not abated. Will this pressure never 
cease ? I most sincerely wish that I had no offices to 
bestow. If I had not, it would add much to the 
happiness and comfort of my position. As it is, I 
have no office to bestow without turning out better 
men than a large majority of those who seek their 
places." Again in September is his loathing expressed 
at this " constant stream of persons seeking office and 
begging money." " Almost the whole of my embar- 
rassment in administering the government," he writes 
in JNIay, 1847, "grows out of the public patronage 
Avhich it is my duty to dispense." But the pressure 
of these "loafers for office" lasted his whole term; 
even " females " (as he expresses himself) seeking 
personal interviews and pleading " for their worthless 
relatives." During the summer of 1848, at a time 
when there were no existing offices to bestow, the 
President was besieged by applicants, simply because 
Congress was going to pass a bill for creating a board 
of commissioners upon Mexican claims, which might 
or might not meet the executive approval; and so 
greatly were the places sought in advance of their 
creation that one woman pleaded for her husband as 
a commissioner, shedding tears freely, and distressing 



PRESIDENT POLK'S DIARY. 127 

the President with a story of their poverty and great 
need of an office ; while another person — a man with 
whom Mr. Polk had once served in Congress — occu- 
pied more than an hour in soliciting a place upon the 
board, "if the bill should pass." "I had," adds the 
diarist, " no idea of appointing him, and yet I could 
not avoid hearing him without rudeness." Even 
after the presidential election of 1848, in which 
Polk's own party candidate was defeated by the 
Whigs, the pressure upon this Democratic President 
continued strong, under the apparent conviction that 
the incoming Executive, General Taylor, was not 
likely to make many removals. " The herd of office- 
seekers," observes Mr. Polk at this late stage, "are 
the most unprincipled persons in the country. As a 
mass they are governed by no principle." And pro- 
fessing to be Democrats under him, he expected them 
to go vice versa under his Whig successor, whom 
many of them had helped elect. "The patronage," 
he finally adds, shortly before leaving office, " will, 
from the day any President enters upon his duties, 
weaken his administration." 

Judge Mason, of the Cabinet, told the President in 
April, 1848, of one office-seeker whose papers were 
filed at his department without specifying any par- 
ticular office. The Secretary asked him what office 
he wanted. "I am a good hand at making treaties," 
he replied, "and as some are to be made soon, I 
should like to serve as a minister abroad." 

The constant interference of members of Congress 
in these matters of patronage was another source of 
annoyance upon which j\Ir. Polk made frequent com- 
ment. "Members of Congress," he writes, "attach 
great importance to petty offices, and assume their 
right to make the • appointments in their own States, 



128 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

thereby joining issue Avitli heads of the departments 
in such matters." He was much annoyed when a 
j)rominent member of the House, who had ah-eady 
declined the mission to Russia, pursued him for an 
appointment to the court of France, not only in 
writing, but in person at the White House, and face 
to face, most persistently; and when, after much 
urging, the President yielded to his wishes, and the 
Senate rejected the appointment, tliis person grew 
angry because Polk promptly sent in another name, 
and he soon drifted into a semi-hostile position 
towards the administration. Two other members of 
the House, at the time the Mexican war was declared, 
desired appointments as military paymasters, under 
a new bill which they had done much to frame and 
push through Congress; but appointments trenching 
so closely upon the prohibition of the Constitution 
the President refused to make. Again and again 
did legislators at the Capitol oppose the executive 
wishes, or treat the highest incumbent with personal 
incivility over some quarrel of patronage. " Patron- 
age is injurious to a President," was Polk's decided 
opinion, as he secretly expressed himself; and this 
partly because legislators did not stand by the conse- 
quences of their own recommendations. "JNIembers 
of Congress," writes the President, December IG, 
1846, "and others high in society make representa- 
tions for friends on which I cannot rely, and lead me 
constantly into error. When I act upon the informa- 
tion which they give me, and make a mistake, they 
leave me to bear the responsibility, and never have 
the manliness to assume it for themselves." And 
yet few American executives had seen greater expe- 
rience than Polk in congressional life, or proved more 
capable, while at the other end of the avenue, of 



PRESIDENT POLK'S DIARY. 129 

iiianaging our national legislature so as to achieve 
their most cherished plans. 

John Quincy Adams, while detesting Polk's politi- 
cal principles and his narrow conceptions of party 
infallibility, does justice to his unquestionable capac- 
ity for toilsome work and indefatigable industry. 
The same habits which made this son of Tennessee 
so conspicuous in despatching legislative business 
while chairman of the Ways and Means committee 
or Speaker of the House insured his successful career 
as President. Failing though he was in health dur- 
ing these four consummate years, he did not hesitate 
to 2)nt his shoulder to the wheel whenever the work 
of the departments got into deep mire. This was 
partly because he distrusted others, and felt con- 
stantly disposed to keep all executive details, foreign 
or domestic, great or small, under his personal con- 
trol. With the unexpected burdens thrown upon liis 
administration by the Mexican war, he soon found his 
Secretary of the Treasury quite overworked, and in 
danger of death; and the President, sending him 
away for recuperation, took an active hand in the 
financial guidance of the government, at the same 
time aiding his Secretary of War, who also was taken 
sick. General Scott he disliked greatly, as the rank- 
ing military officer, and found his j^resence at Wash- 
ington so embarrassing that he resolved to send him 
off ; and he stronglj^ suspected that the detailed chiefs 
of the quartermaster and commissary divisions were 
hostile to his Mexican policy. Some of these subor- 
dinates (so he writes) "appear to be indifferent to 
our contest, and merely go through their ordinary 
routine." On general principle, too, he felt disposed 
to check such lesser chiefs. "Bureau officers," he 
writes in November, 1848, "whose duty it is to pre- 

9 



130 HISTORICAL BEIEFS. 

pare estimates, are always in favor of large appropria- 
tions. They are not responsi])le to the public, but to 
the Executive, and must be watched and controlled in 
these respects." After the adjournment of the long 
session of Congress, in August of the same year, 
Polk, who had not been three miles away from the 
White House (as he relates) for more than thirteen 
months, took a brief vacation trip for his health to 
the mineral springs of Pennsylvania, and was back 
again in ten days; attending to his duties at the 
capital in the hottest summer weather, receiving 
important secret despatches from abroad, and in fact 
conducting the government for a whole month with- 
out the aid of his Cabinet, who were mostly away. 
"So familiar am I," he records at this time, "with 
all the principles and details of the administration 
that I have no difficulty in doing so ; " and he declared 
that he found himself better acquainted with the 
work than his subordinates themselves. But he con- 
fessed to himself, while thus engaged, that he found 
the presidency no bed of roses. "No President," he 
writes at the close of this year, "who performs his 
duty faithfully and conscientiously can have any 
leisure. If he intrusts the details and smaller matters 
to subordinates, constant errors will occur. I jjrefer 
to supervise the whole operations of the government 
myself, rather than intrust the public business to 
subordinates; and this makes my duties very great." 

Mr. Polk had much of Old Hickory's dislike of 
financial monopolists. While looking after the 
Treasury during Secretar}^ Walker's absence, at the 
time of the Mexican war, he was greatly Avorried 
over what seemed to him a criminal abuse of official 
power, whereby a draft for two million dollars for 
prospective disbursements in the quartermaster-gen- 



PRESIDENT POLK'S DIARY. 131 

eral's bureau had been lodged with private bankers, 
to be checked out as might become needfuL To one 
of his own simple integrity in money matters, defal- 
cation aj^peared imminent; but the Secretary excul- 
pated himself from misconduct, and assured the 
President that the banking credit behind the draft 
was strong and adequate. Still j^robing into the 
transaction, the President found that confidential 
favors in the way of a special deposit were part of 
the consideration upon which our war loans had 
been negotiated ; and others of the Cabinet coming to 
the rescue of their associate, and declaring such an 
arrangement legal in their opinion, the matter appears 
to have finally rested. 

In various other respects our eleventh President 
bore strong resemblance to his immortal fellow-towns- 
man, as the disciple to the master, the less to the 
greater. With the qualities of civilian and legisla- 
tor, instead of warrior or forceful leader of the mass, 
he had nevertheless a corresponding tenacity of pur- 
pose within the circumscription of strict party lines. 
Andrew Jackson was his great patron and exemplar, 
and from that idolized Democrat of the Democracy 
came doubtless the chief inspiration of his own foreign 
policy; though Jackson died too soon after this new 
administration came into power to influence it greatly 
in particulars. Polk's affection and veneration for 
the general appear, however, in various letters copied 
among these papers; and Jackson wrote frequently 
from the Hermitage in confidence, being overrun with 
applications for oifice, not a few of which he pressed 
upon the new Executive with characteristic com- 
ment. We here see injected into the tale of his o'svn 
bodil}' ailments some sensil^le political counsel as 
against the "Whiggs" and those "who run with the 



132 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

hare and cry with the hounds;" and Polk took 
strongly to heart the language of one letter which he 
sometimes quoted afterwards, — to take principle for 
his guide and make the pul)lic good his end, "stear- 
ing clear of the intrigues and machinations of political 
dikes." Indeed, the new President of the Democracy 
valued so greatly the good will of his early prede- 
cessor, though not always free to follow his advice, 
that upon Jackson's death, in June, 1845, he sought 
eagerly a last letter written him, to show to inci})ient 
enemies that their cordial relation had continued to 
the close. This letter appears to have been mislaid, 
in the midst of household confusion at Nashville, and 
political treachery was suspected, until, after much 
anxious inquiry, it reached Washington with a suit- 
able explanation. To Polk's dismay, however, the 
hero's dying communication proved unsuitable for 
publication, since the burden of it was, in all friendly 
confidence, to denounce Polk's chosen Secretary of 
the Treasury, whom Jackson much disliked, and to 
guide the chief Executive into a train of inquiry 
regarding this man and a former government official, 
also stigmatized by the writer as dishonest, which 
might elicit certain facts and blow them both " sky- 
hio'h." Some interesting accounts of Jackson's last 
hours and funeral are contained among the Polk 
papers ; and it appears that in the last simple service 
at the Hermitage the hymn given out (most inappro- 
priate to the exit of such a character) began, — 

" What timorous worms we mortals are ! " 

Within the horizon of his mental vision President 
Polk was singularly clear-sighted and sensible; but 
he was hemmed in by partisan and religious preju- 
dices which limited the range of his comprehension. 



PRESIDENT POLK'S DIARY. 133 

His private and public ■writings alike afford, full proof 
of this. In his Diary, the Whigs he persisted in 
styling "Federalists," until the political strength of 
that party with the people, and the genial influence 
of Henry Clay, who paid him a notable visit on 
returning to the Senate, won his fair respect as the 
canvass of 1848 approached. He records his disbelief 
in judges of opposition tendency who might become 
"Federalists" upon the bench in their construction 
of the law. Office-holders under Tyler's administra- 
tion who claimed that they had been conservative 
Democrats found no favor with him ; and when the 
Mexican war broke out, though he candidly admitted 
that Whigs must have some of the military appoint- 
ments, his repugnance for Winfield Scott as the 
major-general commanding proved inveterate, and he 
began disparaging Zachary Taylor as soon as the 
latter's renown attracted those opposed to the party 
in power. More and more did he convince himself, 
as Taylor's star rose, that this favorite of the Whigs 
was without soldierly qualities except as a fighter; 
and he refused to allow a salute to be fired, on the 
news of Buena Vista. While trying earnestly, more- 
over, to assuage the factional quarrels of his party in 
New York State, he pressed constant!}^ the idea that 
principle and public good were bound up in the con- 
tinuous success of the Democracy. In religion he 
showed, as a Presbj^terian, the same rigid and in- 
flexible adherence to his faith; being devout and 
devoted to public worship, decent not to fail in 
attendance upon the congressional funerals at Wash- 
ington, of which there were many ; and so much of a 
rigid Sabbatarian withal that he repeatedly recorded 
his regrets when forced to transact pul)lic business on 
Sunday, though some of the most crafty work of his 



134 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

whole term was despatched on that day. With some- 
thing, perhaps, of religious fervor, he seemed imbued 
with the idea that he led God's chosen people ; what- 
ever possessions his fellow-countrymen might apj^ear 
to covet he was ready to go for, and fetch, with little 
scruple for the ownership of others. Like the great 
Jackson, he felt that " might makes right " in national 
policy, and was ready to despoil our Spanish-Ameri- 
can neighbors, who were trying, in their own poor 
way, to emulate our example of self-government. 

Polk's deficient ideality blinded him to some of the 
inevitable results of such a spoliation in debasing 
American character and engendering strife ; and the 
gradual alienation of Democratic leaders from his 
support during the Mexican war he ascribed, possibly 
too closely, to personal grievances. In the sectional 
struggle for partitioning our conquered domains 
between slavery and freedom he could see nothing 
but "a wicked and senseless agitation," of which 
selfish statesmen were seeldng to make a hobby. 
His lost political friendships he imputed unhesitat- 
ingly and altogether to political disappointments. 
Calhoun, he recalled, had been dissatisfied "ever 
since I did not retain him in the Cabinet." Benton, 
whom he certainly tried most assiduously to please, 
was uncivil to him, and threatening " from the day I 
appointed a court-martial on Fremont," his son-in- 
law; and he says, not untruly, that Benton "is apt 
to think that nothing is properly done that he is not 
previously consulted about." Van Buren took early 
offence, he thought, because the new President would 
not let him make the selection of the Cabinet. " I 
have preserved," he writes, "his most extraordinary 
letter to me on that subject, making no reply to it; 
and I have since had no direct correspondence except 



PRESIDENT POLK'S DIARY. 135 

to frank him two annual messages, and to receive his 
acknowledgment." Van Buren's acceptance of the 
Free-Soil nomination for President in 1848 against 
the regular Democratic candidate moved Polk greatly. 
"He is the most fallen man I have ever known," 
records the chief magistrate in his Diarj^; and he 
promptly removed Van Buren's personal friend from 
the district attorneyship in New York, appointing 
another in his place. 

Mr. Polk's wife, who was a devout religious wor- 
shipper like himself, and whose decided views of 
social decorum strongly impressed the White House 
entertainments of her day, seems to have shai'ed in 
some of her husband's personal dislikes, with that 
redoubled intensity to which many good wives incline. 
Her antipathy to the Van Buren family was shown 
in her bearing towards the ex-President's son, famil- 
iarly styled "Prince John." Her husband relates 
his amusement at finding that she had on two or 
three occasions countermanded his own order direct- 
ing this schismatic Democrat to be invited to a White 
House dinner, and that on one occasion she burned a 
dinner ticket which the President had requested his 
private secretary to send him. The reason she as- 
signed was that John Van Buren had not called on her ; 
but we may question whether this was the only one. 

In the presidential canvass of 1848, when for the 
first time our national elections were held on the 
same day throughout the Union, under an act of 
Congress, Mr. Polk felt strongly interested on behalf 
of the regular Democratic ticket. Lewis Cass, the 
party candidate, was a personal friend, considerate 
enough to show his letter of acceptance, and modify 
it upon President Polk's advice; particularly on the 
point of announcing that if elected he would carry 



136 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

out his policy according to the convention phitform; 
a pledge which Mr. Polk tliought inexpedient as a 
rule. Over the successorship itself Polk had main- 
tained a strict neutrality; inflexibly refusing to run 
for a second term, or to allow the use of his name 
before the convention, though many urged him to do 
so. He passed many sick days during this campaign, 
and had much apart from the political contest to 
worry him. But disastrously as the election turned 
out for his party, he gained in composure and spirit 
when all was over, and his own public work was 
substantially done. He felt proud to think that, 
after all, he had finished the Mexican war su(icess- 
fully before his retirement, and had commenced 
reducing the public debt besides; that he would 
leave office with foreign relations everywhere at 
peace, and no troubles to transmit. Towards the 
New York "Barnburners," or Free-Soil Democrats, 
his resentment was implacable ; and when his Secre- 
tary of State, always bent on conciliating the doubt- 
ful elements, selected a Rochester newspaper of that 
party, soon after election day, to publish the laws of 
the United States for a year, he sternly counter- 
manded the choice, refusing to allow the patronage 
of public printing to any press which had not 
approved his administration. Buchanan, unable to 
satisfy him by alleging that this newspaper had been 
moderate in its opposition, put upon the President 
the whole responsibility of revoking this appoint- 
ment, and Polk accepted it; the Secretary drew up a 
letter stating that this revocation was at the Presi- 
dent's special request, and the President permitted 
it to be sent. 

Mr. Polk has recorded with evident relish and good 
nature whatever signs of civility and popular respect 



PRESIDENT POLK'S DIARY. 137 

he observed during the last few weeks that he occu- 
pied the White House. Hundreds of callers greeted 
him in the East Room at a January reception, and he 
walked through the parlors, delighted, with the 
famous JNIrs. ]\Iadison on his arm. He thought it 
worth while to write out in his Diary a recipe for 
23residential handshaking, which he gave to some of 
his friends orally about this time : " If a man surren- 
dered his arm to be shaken by one horizontally, by 
another perpendicularly, and by another with a strong 
grip, he could not fail to suffer severely from it; 
but if he would shake and not be shaken, grip and 
not be gripped, taking care always to squeeze the hand 
of his adversary as hard as the adversary squeezed 
him, he would suffer no inconvenience from it. I 
can generally anticipate a strong grip from a strong 
man; and I then take advantage of him by being 
quicker than he, and seizing him by the tip of his 
fingers." "I stated this playfully," he adds, "but it 
is all true." 

When his chosen successor reached Washington, 
in February, 1849, the administration naturally felt 
some embarrassment, for the President's treatment of 
Zachary Taylor during the Mexican war had given 
the latter great offence. The two had never met in 
person, and Buchanan, over-anxious as usual, would 
have strained official etiquette in the endeavor to 
reconcile them. But Polk stood properly upon his 
executive dignit}^, Avhich was far better, and waited 
for what was due him. Nor did he lose by doing so ; 
for Taylor, bred to military hal)its, considerate and 
kind-hearted, paid his ceremonial visit to the White 
House in company with political friends ; and Polk, 
reciprocating the courtesy, gave his fellow-Southerner 
an elaborate dinner party, which was attended by all 



138 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

the Cabinet officers with their wives, and many emi- 
nent men of both parties. " All went off in the best 
style," says the Diary, "and not the slightest allusion 
was made to political subjects." 

Finally, on the 3d of March, our Democratic Presi- 
dent closed his work by visiting the Capitol to sign 
bills during the last night session of Congress. He 
carried Avith him a carefully written veto message on 
internal improvements, to use if needful ; but no bill 
of that character passed, — possibly, one might sur- 
mise, to his own regret, for he made record that he 
considered that unused message one of the ablest 
papers he had ever prepared. 

Vice-President Dallas, who served through this 
whole four years' term, eulogizes Mr. Polk as plain, 
unaffected, affable, and kind in his personal deport- 
ment, with a consistent simplicity of life and purity 
of manners; as temperate l)ut not unsocial, indus- 
trious but accessible. Concerning Polk's secretive 
disposition and quiet persistency in his plans, more 
might have been added. But Dallas says very justly, 
" He left nothing unfinished ; what he attempted he 
did." That Polk desired to be well remembered by 
posterity appears from his will; for, being childless, 
he devised his estate in successive interests to the 
worthiest who should bear the name of Polk. But 
this singular provision was lately set aside in the 
Tennessee courts, soon after the widow's death, as 
void for perpetuity, and the property passed abso- 
lutely to his legal heirs, — a new instance, among 
the many which our present age supplies, of the 
vanity of testamentary wishes. 

In another article I shall consider President Polk's 
public policy and achievements, as illustrated and 
made clear by his private papers. 



PRESIDENT POLK'S ADMINISTRATION. 

The great achievements of President Polk's 
administration were four in number: the full estab- 
lishment of the independent treasury, which divorced 
government dealings from the banks; the low tariff ; 
the adjustment of a northwest boundary with Great 
Britain, which secured our title to Oregon; and the 
management of our annexation of Texas, by diplomacy 
and bloodshed, so as to despoil Mexico of a still 
further portion of her domains, and gain a broad 
southerly area to the Pacific, inclusive of California 
and New Mexico. All four of these achievements 
were clearly purposed by our eleventh President 
when he entered upon his executive duties; in all 
four he took the initiative, so far as possible, before 
Congress assembled in its first session under his 
term; and, with the co-operation of Congress, he 
accomplished, before that first session ended, every 
one of the projects except the last, which, proving 
slow and difficult of fulfilment, and withal develop- 
ing only gradually before our people as the extent of 
his secret purpose revealed itself, he despatched as 
rapidly and surely as the exigencies would permit. 
Before another presidential election he had wrought 
out his task to completion. 

I shall in this paper ^ consider those four cardinal 
points of policy only so far as the testimony afforded 

Re-printed from Atlantic INTonthly, September, 1895. 
1 See also "President Polk's Diary," p. 121. 



140 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

by Mr. Polk's papers, and especially his Diary, may 
furnish to our own age plain illustration and proof of 
historical importance. The first three topics may be 
passed over rapidly. The sub-treasury or independent 
treasury plan originated under President Van Buren, 
as a Democratic measure ; but when the Whigs came 
into power, they at once repealed the sub-treasury 
act before a fair trial of the experiment, meaning to 
restore the former national bank system, which, 
however, Harrison's untimely death and the Vice- 
President's recreancy debarred them from doing. In 
this respect, therefore, Polk, as a Democratic Presi- 
dent, had simply to restore Democratic policy to the 
national finances, and the Van Buren measure was 
re-enacted, to remain enduring. "I have always 
been for the independent treasury, like Silas Wright," 
records this new President, referring to the imme- 
diate author of the original bill. Next, as concerns 
the low tariff, that most admirable achievement of 
this new administration, Polk was a strong pioneer in 
the reduction of duties, and neither the fears nor the 
opposition of his own party friends could divert him. 
He had, to be sure, equivocated somewhat in his 
opinions in the presidential canvass of 1844; and 
when, in his first presidential message, he boldly 
proposed tariff reform in this open-trade direction, 
ably seconded though he was by his Secretary of the 
Treasury, the consternation was very great among 
Pennsylvanians of his party. Secretary Buchanan, 
as I have mentioned elsewhere, would gladly have 
left the Cabinet and gone upon the supreme bench of 
the United States, so as to shirk the issue with his 
political friends, had not Polk kept back his promised 
appointment to the place until the legislative struggle 
was over, thereby committing to his own policy the aid 



PRESIDENT POLK'S AD^flNISTRATION. 141 

wliicli lie needed. Mr. Polk is entitled fairly to the 
fame of a successful experiment on the Lasis of non- 
protection and liberal trade which gave to this country- 
great mercantile prosperity and commercial expan- 
sion down to the Civil War, and won the approval 
of all political parties. "The tariff portion," as he 
states, of his first annual message, in the Diary, "is 
mine, and all the message is mine." He evictently, 
and with good reason, cherished the belief that such 
a tariff, framed in co-operation with Sir Robert 
Peel's corn laws and England's new departure for 
free trade with the world, would aid in uniting the 
two countries more closely in reciprocal commerce, 
and in reconciling Great Britain to concessions most 
desirable for settling the Oregon question. While 
procuring the needful enactment, Polk's Diary shows 
him in his former and most familiar character of a 
driver of business through the national legislature. 
We see him, by the light of his private revelations, 
strongly interesting himself in the progress of this 
tariff-reduction measure through the two Houses 
during every stage, setting his heart upon accomplish- 
ing the work wholly and at once during the first and 
long session of Congress ; and, with this end steadily 
in view, we perceive him forcing it through with 
indefatigable zeal against all factional opposition 
among his party supporters, and in spite of foreign 
war and other dangerous responsibilities which had 
accumulated upon his hands in those same early 
months. A tariff-reduction act was not unjiopular 
witli the country at large, and hence the House 
passed it with comparative harmony. But the real 
struggle came, as such struggles will, in the Senate 
and confederate branch ; and upon the Democrats of 
that less responsive chamber he next brought to bear 



142 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

all the personal arguments lie could urge in private 
conference, all the persuasion of Cabinet officers, all 
the patronage at his official command, for gaining his 
end. 

The executive anxiety was not without good cause, 
for Polk's party friends were so much divided upon 
this vexatious issue that, after the best efforts of the 
White House were exhausted, the fate of the measure 
was found to depend finally on the uncertain vote of 
a single Democratic Senator. The casting vote of 
Vice-President Dallas, however, carried the bill 
through its most critical stage, after which the act 
passed the Senate by a majority of one. On the 
29th of July, 1846, the President rejoiced that his 
tariff measure was finally passed, and he felt himself 
free to veto a river and harbor act which came also to 
hand for his signature. 

Upon the Oregon boundary, Polk's Diary opens 
with confidential interviews which Buchanan had 
with him upon the subject, while negotiations 
remained at a stand after the compromise of boundary 
suggested on our side had been rejected by the Eng- 
lish minister in discourteous language, which Polk 
quickly resented. And now we see the Secretary of 
State timorous over the situation, while the Presi- 
dent, confident that reflection would bring the adver- 
sary to his own proposition, waited for British 
overtures, betraying no nervousness and willing to 
bide his time. In spite of Buchanan's dread, our 
people had no fight for the line of 54° 40', though 
there was abundant bluster in Congress over the sub- 
ject. The fair compromise line was in due time pro- 
posed again, this time by Great Britain's negotiator, 
and a treaty based upon that settlement was promptly 
ratified by our Senate before the long session ended. 



PRESIDENT POLK'S ADMINISTRATION. 143 

Thus happily was an old controversy laid at rest; and 
so far honorably, as Jefferson had borne us beyond 
the Mississippi, did this new Democratic Executive 
plant American colonization firmly upon the Pacific 
strand. 

But the fourth object to which the President had 
devoted himself from the outset was not gained so 
readily ; and vainly imagining that he could buy out 
Mexico through its rulers, and gain the new domain 
he wanted by threats or cajolery, he was cast upon 
the undesired alternative of war to gain his end ; and 
the war once begun, he found it far more stubborn 
and protracted than he had looked for, though a weak 
nation was our foe. The love of liberty and of terri- 
torial integrity burns strong in the breasts of the 
humblest of republican communities; and, whatever 
their dissensions with one another, they will turn 
their arms unitedly against invaders from without, 
and even their corrupt leaders would rather encour- 
age than betray them. Polk saw clearly what our 
superior American people, or at least the Southern 
portion, coveted; and surely, could the new acquisi- 
tion have been fairly gained, the precious soil was 
well worth our permanent acceptance. But what we 
could not obtain by fair means Polk set himself to 
acquiring l\y foul ; and while " Texas re-annexation " 
had been the immediate aim of the party that came 
with him into power, he planned and carried out with 
remarkable secrecy and constancy a dismemberment 
of our sister republic far beyond what this rallying 
cry had called for or expected. The Diary and Cor- 
respondence, with their private disclosures, confirm 
the worst that was ever imputed to this administra- 
tion in its deadly and depredating course. But Polk 
was one of those to whom the end justifies the means ; 



144 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

he Avas fully imbued with the reckless spirit of mani- 
fest destiny which was so rampant in that era, and he 
felt himself God's chosen instrument, in a sense, to 
advance the stars and stripes, and despoil the weak 
of their inheritance. Such was the prevalent per- 
version of the Monroe Doctrine that we seemed 
actually devoted to the idea of making converts to 
the republican faith of the rest of this continent, and 
encouraging all Spanish-American neighbors to emu- 
late our national example to the point of casting off 
European allegiance, and experimenting in the same 
direction with ourselves, only for the sake of lead- 
ing them to misrule and internal disorder, so as to 
make them the readier prey to our own territorial 
greed. Mr. Polk meant to vindicate his Mexican 
policy by the private papers which he preserved so 
carefully; but this vindication was evidently staked 
upon the expectation that public gratitude would 
redound because of the splendid expansion that he 
gave to our national boundaries. He toiled and he 
despoiled for the glory of the American Union; but 
he could see nothing wrong in his despicable treat- 
ment of Mexico, in the crime he perpetrated against 
liberty and the sacred rights of property. He 
was not the kind of patriot to place himself at 
another's point of view, and could feel no tender 
compunctions for an adversary, and least of all for a 
weak one. 

Those familiar with our annals will recall the lead- 
ing facts regarding the admission of Texas into the 
Union in 1845. Wrested from the Mexican confed- 
eracy and people by American colonists and adven- 
turers who had settled within its neighboring limits 
by foreign permission, this independent, or rather 
revolutionary Texan republic sought constitutional 



PRESIDENT POLKS ADMINISTRATION. 145 

alliance with the United States; and after that suc- 
cessful presidential canvass in which the Lone Star 
issue became so prominent, our Democratic Con- 
gress, shortly before Polk's accession, passed a 
provisional act for admitting into the Union that 
foreign but adjacent jurisdiction as a new State 
capable of subdivision. But in order to unite the 
wavering party elements in Congress, this admission 
act placed upon our Executive the alternative of 
accepting Texas immediately under the provisions 
therein specified, or of beginning negotiations anew 
with that republic which Mexico still claimed, and 
postponing annexation indefinitely. The real intent 
of Congress was, of course, to trust the incoming 
President as umpire ; but Tyler, the retiring Execu- 
tive, eager for his own glory, at once, and just before 
retiring from office, chose the first alternative, and 
despatched his swift messenger to Texas with the 
tender of immediate annexation and admission to 
State membership. Polk might consequently have 
disclaimed the responsibility of a decision; but, as 
his papers show, he assembled his Cabinet soon after 
his term began, to consider whether to adopt the late 
President's action or not; and upon the advice of 
these counsellors he pronounced for j)ursuing the 
same line of policy, and issued appropriate orders. 
Francis P. Blair, who, like Benton of the Senate, 
had desired indefinite postponement under the second 
alternative, angrily charged Polk, during the hot 
canvass of 1848, with having pledged himself to the 
second alternative while the act was pending. This, 
however, Polk has emphatically denied; and those 
who best knew the surrounding circumstances and 
had been intimate in the confidence of the President- 
elect — among them Secretary Buchanan and the 

10 



146 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

manager of tlie Texas compromise act, Secretary 
Walker — corroborate by their written statements, 
preserved among Polk's papers, what Polk himself 
asserts, and all those cognizant of his traits of char- 
acter might naturally look for: that he kept his 
choice of plans strictly to himself, and made no 
pledge in advance whatever. But this, at least, Polk 
declares unhesitatingly: that his constant desire had 
been to have Texas admitted into the Union as soon 
as possible, by one means or another, and hence that 
the first alternative was his silent preference, since it 
best secured such admission practicall3^ "For had 
annexation by negotiation been adopted," is his just 
comment in the retrospect, " Texas would have been 
lost to the United States." 

The alternative of immediate annexation once 
decided upon, there was no sign of feebleness in Mr. 
Polk's pursuit of the chosen course. To Andrew J. 
Donelson, despatched upon this mission, the Presi- 
dent wrote June 15, repeating his desires, already 
expressed, that the Texas convention, then about to 
meet, should accept annexation to the United States 
unqualifiedly and at once. "That moment," he 
wi'ites, "I shall regard Texas as part of the Union; 
and our army and navy will defend and protect her 
by driving an invading INIexican army out. " Donelson 
was by that time in Texas; and Polk promised to 
send an additional force to the Gulf the next day, 
leaving him to his own discretion in employing our 
troops or vessels should a Mexican army cross the 
Rio Grande. All we want, he says, is for Texas to 
assent to the terms of our statute, and he will not 
wait for the tedious process of forming a new consti- 
tution. ".Of course," he adds, "I would maintain 
the Texan title to the extent which she claims it to 



PRESIDENT POLKS ADMINISTRATION. 147 

be, and not permit an invading enemy to occupy a 
foot of the soil east of the Rio Grande." In this 
strain President Polk wrote to Sam Houston, also, 
assuring him that all rights of territorial boundary 
would be maintained, if only Texas would accept 
unconditionally the act of our Congress. Here we 
have the key to Polk's whole INIexican policy: which 
was to adopt the pretentious claim set up lately by 
the Texan revolutionists, that the boundaries of that 
republic extended to the Rio Grande, and over unset- 
tled soil which the ]\Iexican State of Texas had never 
included ; and then to manipulate a treaty settlement 
with Mexico which should give to our Union another 
immense fraction of that unhai^py nation's domains. 
By pressure upon that imj)overished country Polk 
thought himself capable of driving a money bargain 
with her pride. Texas embraced her opportunity 
to the fullest extent, and voted in convention to 
accept the terms tendered by Congress, and enter the 
American Union as a new State ; and by September 
16, as the Diary informs us, the President announced 
clearly to his Cabinet that he should try to adjust, 
through this Texas question of limits, a permanent 
boundary between Mexico and the United States, so 
as to comprehend Upper California and New Mexico, 
and give us a line from the mouth of the Rio Grande 
to latitude 32° north, and thence west to the Pacific. 
For such a boundary he was willing, he said, to pay 
$-10,000,000, but could probably purchase it for 
$15,000,000 or $20,000,000. In these views the 
Cabinet unanimously concurred, and instructions were 
given, accordingly, to John Slidell, who went at once 
as a special minister to Mexico, that republic having 
previously broken off its relations with us because of 
our league with Texas. But this September confer- 



148 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

ence followed preparations which the President him- 
self had already secretly started. Slidell, a member 
of the House, was at his home in Louisiana when 
sent off; but there are indications in the Diary that 
he had been fixed upon for such a contingency as the 
present, and had received from Polk himself oral and 
strictly confidential instructions before he left Wash- 
ington in the spring. iVIeanwhile, Dr. Parrott, 
Slidell's prospective secretary of legation, who had 
been in the city of Mexico as a secret emissary, wrote 
from there, August 19, that Mexico was not likely 
to fiofht the United States over the admission of our 
new State, that there would be no invasion of Texas, 
and that our Executive ought to restore Mexican 
relations if he could. 

In much of the underhand work of 1845 — in the 
instructions sent to our naval officers who were cruis- 
ing off the Pacific coast, for instance — Polk dared 
not trust himself to writing out contemporaneously 
in his own journal ; he would instruct various persons 
by word of mouth, and enjoin upon them the utmost 
secrecy; but his Diary's later allusions aid historical 
testimony already gathered from other sources. The 
Diary of May 30, 1846, contains the President's inci- 
dental admission, at that tardy date, that in Slidell's 
instructions of 1845 "the acquisition of California 
and New Mexico, with perhaps some northern pro- 
vinces," had been included. Polk's reticence to 
others he practised with constant constraint for him- 
self when committing his Mexican plans privately to 
paper; for in all this he meant to forestall public 
opinion, not to court it, believing that the public 
results would justify him before the people. 

In Polk's private correspondence may be found 
General Scott's report with the President's indorse- 



PRESIDENT POLK'S ADMINISTRATION. 149 

ment, dated January 13, 1846, in justification of the 
famous order which required General Taylor to 
advance from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande. Its 
preamble is worth quoting in this connection, inspired 
as it probably was in expression by the commander- 
in-chief or Secretary of War: "Congress having 
accepted the constitution adopted by the State of 
Texas, in convention assembled, in which constitu- 
tion the Rio Grande del Norte is, at least in part, 
claimed as one of her boundaries, — subject, it may 
be, to future modification in part, by a treaty of limits 
between the United States and Mexico," — the Presi- 
dent of the United States, through the War Depart- 
ment, had deemed it his duty to give instructions to 
General Zachary Taylor to advance and occupy such 
positions at or near Rio del Norte as might be 
necessary. 

President Polk has been greatly blamed for precipi- 
tating the United States into an unrighteous war 
with Mexico, and at the same time placing the onus 
of hostilities, most craftily and dishonestly, upon that 
republic. The familiar phrases of his message will 
be recalled : " JNIexico has passed the boundary of the 
United States, has invaded our territory and shed 
American blood upon the American soil;" "War 
exists, and, notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid 
it, exists by the act of Mexico herself." The real 
climax as shown l)y the Diary makes his dissimulation 
even greater than has been supposed. Saturday, the 
9th of May, 1846, was a memorable one. Slidell was 
now in Washington, having returned from a mission 
for purchase utterly fruitless ; and Polk, feeling con- 
vinced that nothing but war would give us the treaty 
of ample cession that he was bent upon procuring, 
took up a war policy. It was not the original Texas 



150 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

wliich had won its independence that he wanted to 
annex, for Mexico sought no recoveiy; nor was it 
Texas as voted to the Rio Grande, for Taylor held 
that disputed solitude by military possession, and 
was the real aggressor; but it was a new and broader 
belt to the Pacific, whose clear title could be won, as 
now seemed clear, only by force of arms. Congress 
being in the midst of its long session, the President 
summoned his Cabinet on this Saturday, and stated 
that it was his desire to send to the two Houses an 
immediate war message. But no news of any armed 
advance or opposition by the Mexicans, or of blood- 
shed or collision of any sort, had yet reached Wash- 
ington from the front, where General Taylor with 
his command was already posted to make the disputed 
area of Texas our own. The Cabinet as a whole 
advised the President encouragingly, but Buchanan 
not without hesitation, while Bancroft, the Secretary 
of the Navy, gave his candid opinion that we ought 
to wait for some act of hostility before declaring war. 
Polk's Diary shows, however, that he preferred to 
recommend war as matters stood, for after the adjourn- 
ment he made his preparations to write a message. 
But a new and sudden turn was given to the situation 
about sunset of the same day, when despatches from 
General Taylor reached the White House by the 
Southern mail, reporting that slight and casual attack 
by Mexicans and loss of life on the line of the Rio 
Grande which has since passed into history. Here 
then was the opportunity for throwing all scruples 
aside; and that Polk made the most of this casus 
hclli, of this shedding the first drop of blood by 
Mexico, the American world is well aware. The 
Cabinet were summoned once more, in the evening; 
and they agreed unanimously that a war message 



PRESIDENT POLKS ADMINISTRATION. 151 

should be sent into Congress on INIonday, based upon 
this new state of facts. But would not that war 
message have been sent the same, had not this oppor- 
tune intelligence arrived from the front? All now, 
says the Diary, was unity and energy. Mr. Polk 
worked all Sunday over the message, except for his 
attendance on morning church; Secretary Bancroft, 
who took dinner with him, giving his skilful literary 
aid in the afternoon. There was great excitement in 
Washington, and confidential friends of the Democ- 
racy were preparing to have Congress co-operate. 
"It was," records the President piously, but with no 
apparent sense of the unrighteousness of his secular 
task, " a day of great anxiety to me, and I regretted 
the necessity for me to spend the Sabbath in the 
manner I have." On the morning of Monday, the 
momentous 11th of May, Mr. Polk shut out com- 
pany, and carefully revised this war message, which 
he sent in to Congress about noon ; and such was the 
haste of preparation that he had not time to read 
over the accompanying executive correspondence, 
though he had seen the originals. Slidell, in the 
afternoon, called upon him, to announce that though 
the bill for declaring war with Mexico passed the 
House, the Senate had adjourned without action, and 
evidently not united. But the bill went through that 
branch on Tuesday, with a slight amendment, in 
which the House concurred. The act was l)rought to 
the President soon after the noon of Wednesday, 
May 13, and he approved and signed it; and an 
executive proclamation was forthwith issued which 
announced the existence of war, following the example 
of President Madison in 1812. 

But there were already symptoms of national dis- 
sension to impress the Cabinet circle; Buchanan, at 



152 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

least, among Polk's chosen advisers, showing, besides 
his characteristic timidity, some forecast of the public 
dangers which would attend this new greed for expan- 
sion. In draughting a circular to our ministers in 
Europe, which announced the Mexican war, he stated 
expressly, and as though to allay suspicion, that our 
object was not to dismember ]\Iexico nor to make 
conquest; that our boundary line as claimed against 
that republic was the Rio Grande. This draught 
was read at the Cabinet meeting on this same loth of 
May ; and the Diary gives a full account of the con- 
ference. " I will not tie up my hands by any such 
pledge," declared the President at once and decidedly. 
"In making peace with our adversary, we sliall 
acquire California and New Mexico and other further 
territory, as an indemnity for this war, if we can." A 
warm discussion now arose in the Cabinet, Buchanan 
contending on his part that England and France 
would in that case help Mexico against us; for as 
yet the Oregon line was still in controversy with 
Great Britain. But again did the President refuse 
to embarrass his course by au}^ such pledge ; nor, he 
added, would he tolerate any intermeddling by Euro- 
pean nations. The Secretary of State, says the Diary, 
stood alone in this matter; ]Marcy being absent on 
account of business pressure at the War Department. 
Secretary Bancroft, the Attorney-General, and the 
Postmaster-General all sided strongly with the Presi- 
dent, while Secretary Walker spoke with much excite- 
ment against the draught as Buchanan had prepared 
it. At last, to end discussion, INIr. Polk stepped to 
his table and wrote out a new paragraph in place of 
that which had disclaimed all intention of further 
dismemlierment ; and Buchanan's despatches, when 
sent abroad, substituted the presidential paragraph 



PRESIDENT POLK'S ADMINISTRATION. 153 

for liis own. "This," records Polk, "was one of the 
most earnest and interesting discussions which have 
occurred in my Cabinet," and it ended a day "of 
intense application, anxiety, and labor." 

Some authentic explanation has long been wished 
of Secretary Bancroft's naval order, dated on May 13, 
when war was declared, which instructed our block- 
ading squadron in the Gulf to permit Santa Anna, 
as a returning exile from Havana, to pass through 
with his suite, unmolested. The historical suspicion 
has been that this ex-President and military chief of 
Mexico was in secret concert with our administra- 
tion; and the Polk papers make that suspicion a 
certainty by their revelations. It appears from the 
Diary that about February 13, 1816, and before our 
jNIexican relations had culminated in war, a Spanish- 
American officer and revolutionist — Colonel Atocha 
by name — held a secret interview at Washington 
with President Polk, and gave the latter the impres- 
sion, while Mexico was in strong public commotion, 
that Santa Anna had sent to arrange for his own 
restoration to the head of the Mexican government, 
on the assurance that our ends would be gained in 
return. jNIr. Polk consulted his Cabinet upon such 
an arrangement, and with their consent, though 
Buchanan opposed, despatched his confidential agent 
to Havana, when war broke out, to confer with the 
distinguished exile. That agent was Commander 
Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, of the navy, to whose 
rumored mission j\Ir. Benton alludes in his " Thirty 
Years' View," though more slightingly, perhaps, 
than the facts justify. INIackenzie's despatches to 
the President, which were received at Washington 
on the 3d of August, are contained in full in the 
Polk Correspondence. It appears that the President 



154 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

made the Bancroft order to our blockading squadron 
the occasion for an oral message to Santa Anna, 
which Mackenzie reduced to writing and read to the 
Mexican general; thereby exceeding his authority, 
according to Polk's Diary record of January, 1848, 
since he should have delivered it orally. In course 
of the two interviews they held together, Santa Anna, 
as jNIackenzie reports, asserted that, if in power once 
more in his own country, he would make concessions 
rather than see Mexico ruled by a foreign prince; 
that he preferred a friendly arrangement with the 
United States to the ravages of war; that he desired 
republican principles and a liberal government, exclud- 
ing all mediation of England and France. Santa 
Anna advised that Taylor should advance his forces 
to Santillo. He also expressed a sense of his own 
kind treatment while a prisoner after the battle of 
San Jacinto, and said that if he did not return to 
Mexico he should like to become a citizen of the 
United States, and live in Texas. Santa Anna wrote 
a paper, it seems, for submission to our State Depart- 
ment. It is hard to say whether Polk's administra- 
tion, in thus co-operating with the ablest of all 
Mexicans of the age, civil or military, in a sul)tle and 
sly intrigue for revolutionizing the republic with 
which we were now at war, was not overreached in 
its own game; at all events, Santa Anna, with his 
suite, passed our blockading line to Vera Cruz under 
the Bancroft order, not many weeks later, re-entered 
his country, and placed himself at the head of affairs ; 
proving himself, however, after having done so, the 
most energetic and persistent of all IVIexican oppo- 
nents in the field, instead of our artful ally for 
dismemberment. 

Most of the familiar episodes of the Mexican war 



PRESIDENT POLK'S ADMIXISTKATION. 155 

are strongly lighted up by the daily entries of Polk's 
Diary: his strong dislike of Scott, and his increasing 
disparagement of Zachary Taylor as the latter began 
to lie talked about for the next President; the earnest 
intrigue in the administration circle to supersede both 
of these Whig generals by the Democratic Benton, 
under a projected measure for creating a lieutenant- 
general to outrank them both, — a scheme in which 
Benton personally was most active; the failure of 
such a bill for want of a part}^ support in Congress, 
followed by Polk's abortive effort to bring Benton 
into the field as one of the new major-generals, and 
Benton's haughty refusal of a commission because 
the President would not retire all the existing major- 
generals in his own favor, and give him plenary 
powers to arrange a treaty besides ; ^ the Calhoun 
"fencing in" plan for conducting the war by seizing 
and holding simply the territory we wanted, which 
appears to have been first broached by a military 
officer, but was dropped upon full Cabinet consulta- 
tion, because such inactivity would not give us a 
parchment title, and might make the war too unpopu- 
lar at home to be borne ; Polk's disgust upon finding 
that the Wliigs were having this war to their own 
party account, while he bore all the odium of it; 
Scott's quarrels at the front, and his recall after the 
capture of the city of Mexico ; Trist, the clerk of the 
State Department, and his troubles over a treaty 
which he could not jijrocure in a satisfactory form 
until he had ceased to be an accredited agent for 
negotiating one. Many were the mean expedients 
brouo-ht forward from time to time for headinsr off 

o ^ o 

1 " The difficulty," records Polk iu his Diary, " is about recallin^^ 
Butler and Patterson" (the Democratic iiiajor-geuerals). "I would 
have recalled Scott and Tavlor." 



156 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

public opinion in the unhappy republic whose patriot- 
ism thwarted us. Our Executive at first employed 
Roman Catholic priests with his invading army, — 
"not," says the Diary, "as chaplains," but because 
" they spoke the Mexican language " and might 
" undeceive " the adversary ; and in their last straits, 
Polk and his Cabinet had nearly decided to help the 
peace party of INIexico into power if they would exe- 
cute in due form the desired treaty of peace and 
dismemberment. 

At last, however, with all this fair domain our own 
prize, Mr. Polk viewed with alarm and evident sur- 
prise the portentous aspect of the slavery struggle 
which this war had aroused among his own people. 
He feared that such an agitation would " destroy the 
Democratic party, and perhaps the Union;" though 
slavery had, as he believed, "no legitimate connec- 
tion with the war into Mexico, being a domestic, not 
a foreign question." But with this premonition, and 
to check the "worse than useless discussion," this 
"wicked agitation," he publicly proposed extending 
the Missouri Compromise line across to the Pacific, 
and considered himself a national umpire in doing so. 
This adjustment failing in Congress, it is due to 
President Polk to say, further, that during the last 
weeks of his official term he showed himself in private 
counsel a true lover of the Union, like Jackson before 
him, strongly contrasting with Calhoun and many 
others of his ow^i slaveholding section. The Diary 
records an interview which he held at the White 
House with Calhoun January 16, 1849, at the time 
when the latter was gathering Southern congressmen 
into caucus, and trying to combine them for an inflam- 
matory appeal to Southern constituents. Mr. Polk 
thought that movement mischievous, and on this 



PRESIDENT FOLIC S ADMINISTRATION. 157 

occasion expressed to the great nullifier his own strong 
attachment to the Union and his wish to preserve it. 
With reference to our new domain, which was being 
peopled so rapidly in the Sacramento region since the 
gold discovery, Polk now took the very ground which 
Zachary Taylor occupied soon after as his successor. 
"California might be admitted into the Union as a 
State, and so might even New Mexico ; and thus we 
should get rid of the Wilmot antislavery proviso," 
said Polk: "and this is the only practical mode of 
settling the territorial question, — to leave the new 
States to themselves and arrest this slavery agitation." 
To this Calhoun expressed himself oj)posed. He said 
California ought not now to be admitted as a State, 
because slaveholders had found no opportunity to go 
there, and it was sure to become a free State; now 
was the time for the South to resist Northern aggres- 
sions. The two parted in disagreement; and the 
President, commenting in his journal upon this inter- 
view, declares himself satisfied that Calhoun does not 
want the question settled, that he desires disunion. 
"I set my face against all this," he records: "let 
California decide slavery or no slavery, and no South- 
ern man should object." 

Polk's Diary discloses a secret chapter in the expan- 
sion policy of this industrious administration which ^/ 
deserves a final notice. No sooner had the Mexican 
war been brought substantially to a close before our 
untiring President undertook the annexation of Cuba. 
On the 30th of May, 1848, just as a new presidential 
canvass was opening, and even before ratifications 
had been exchanged and peace secured with Mexico, 
Polk broached this other matter to his Cabinet; but 
by this time he had learned a lesson in self-constraint, 
and restricted his proposal to that of a fair purchase, 



158 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

disclaiming all wish for a forcible annexation. His 
Cabinet were evidently divided at first on tliis subject, 
and the Northern portion of it nervous and distrust- 
ful ; Robert J. Walker and John Y. Mason being his 
chief supporters in the council. Buchanan objected 
that it would be a firebrand in the presidential can- 
vass; but Cass, the party candidate, had declared 
himself quite ready and willing to risk his chances 
upon such an issue. On the 6th of June Polk 
brought the subject up again ; insisting that a propo- 
sition of purchase should be made through our minis- 
ter in Spain. A day or two after came confirmation 
of a speedy peace with Mexico, and Polk made it 
clear to his doubting advisers that he had no treach- 
erous plans in reserve. Cubans were at this time in 
insurrection ; and General Quitman, so gallant on the 
Mexican battlefields, would gladly have sailed with a 
force of our returning volunteers upon a filibustering 
expedition. But this, said the President, he could 
not connive at ; he proposed taking no part in Cuban 
revolutions, but to let Spain know that we meant to 
keep back our American troops; at the same time 
notifying that power of our willingness to offer a 
price for the island. In this form, says the Diary, 
the Cabinet unanimously agreed to the President's 
proposal ; even Buchanan assenting with the rest. A 
few days after, Mr. Polk made his offer in due form 
by a despatch transmitted to Minister Saunders at 
Madrid ; sending him a power to treat for Cuba, with 
a hundred million dollars as the limit of a purchase, 
— and all this "profoundly confidential." There is a 
later record of September 16 in Polk's journal, stat- 
ing that an important despatch from INIinister Saunders 
at Spain was read in the Cabinet. What its purport 
was the Diary does not indicate, but doubtless Spain 



PRESIDENT POLK'S ADMINISTRATION. 159 

repulsed our overtures ; and there the matter dropped. 
With a Whig President chosen by the people a few 
weelvs later, this subject, and in fact all schemes for 
further territorial aggrandizement, became indefinitely 
postponed. 

Final Note. — The two foregoing articles seem to embrace by 
statement or allusion all the valuable historical matter to be found in 
President Polk's Diary. One special subject of Polk's repeated com- 
ment is perhaps worth adding, however, in connection with our diplo- 
matic intercourse at Washington, as he found it. The President was 
not a little amused, as well as annoyed, over a custom which prevailed, 
as he tells us, among the European ministers, of making each royal 
birth the occasion of a formal call and pompous announcement at the 
White House. " Amusing and ridiculous," he calls this custom ; and 
he records an instance where the Queen of Portugal had a still-born 
child, and the representative of that country, making his ceremonious 
visit, dilated upon the Queen's sufferings " as minutely as though he 
had been the midwife or attendant physician." Polk, it will be re- 
membered by our reader, was a childless married man. His usual 
response at these parturition interviews, so his Diary informs us, con- 
sisted in a grave congratulation that the direct royal line was not 
likely to fail ; and this assurance he found himself giving repeatedly 
in the case of Great Britain, whose minister informed hira that he 
was in the habit of making such announcements once a year. 



REFORM IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. 

For more than a hundred years our Federal Con- 
stitution has been in full operation ; and yet ninety 
years have elapsed since the proposal and adoption of 
any amendment to that instrument except those three 
which abolished human slavery and closed the Civil 
War. Not a single State of the Union shows such 
stagnation in constitutional reform. On the con- 
trary, our increasing States, each in its own jurisdic- 
tion, have modelled and remodelled their fundamental 
institutions, to check legislative and other abuses and 
yield more closely to popular control; yet the anti- 
quated machinery of the Federal Government still 
creaks on in its operations unchanged, exposing us 
repeatedly to the dangers of national anarchy and 
confusion. 

I speak of constitutional machinery alone; fo'r as 
concerns the general scheme of our government and 
the general distribution of State and Federal powers, 
I offer no criticism. Our fathers framed wisely in 
those latter respects, and custom and precedent have 
aided the development of good results. A national 
policy may well be an elastic policy, leaving much for 
contingencies to shape. It is not to the fundamental 
system, then, of our American Union, but to the 
mode of bringing rulers and representatives into 
power, that I would ask the reader's attention. The 

Reprinted from "The Forum," January, 1895. 



REFORM IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. 161 

recent proposition to choose Senators by the people of 
a State is well worth considering; so, too, are some 
of those checks upon legislative action now so com- 
mon in our modern State constitutions, such as might, 
for instance, prevent a mere casual majority in the 
two branches of Congress from annexing foreign 
territory or admitting new States capriciously with- 
out reference to popular approval or sanction. I con- 
fine myself here to desirable reforms in the method of 
Presidential elections, and in the relation of both 
Presidential and Congressional terms to the popular 
elections of a biennial November, 

In the first place, our anomalous method of choos- 
ing the Chief Executive by electoral colleges has 
become, in the course of a century, not only a sense- 
less but a dilatory and dangerous duplication. We 
know how utterly the expedient of 1787, for obstruct- 
ing popular suffrage on a national scale, has failed of 
its original purpose; and how truly, in consequence, 
the quadrennial assemblage of our present age, when 
millions of voters undertake on an autumn day to 
choose by their own ballots a President and Vice- 
President of the United States, has become in spirit 
a complete perversion of what the Constitution itself 
intended. Yet the letter of that instrument remains; 
and the people of each State still choose, after all, 
simply Presidential electors, just as the several legis- 
latures chose them formerly, and as South Carolina's 
chose them continually down to the Civil War. So 
far as Federal fundamental law is concerned, a State 
legislature may still at any time take the direct choice 
of Presidential electors to itself, depriving the State 
voters of such suffrage; and more than this, Presi- 
dential electors, whether popularly chosen or not, 
have only a moral obligation to cast their votes after- 

11 



162 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

ward, in the college, for the candidates previously 
designated. The whole sanction, in short, upon 
which popular expression rests in the selection, every 
four years, of President and Vice-President of the 
United States — the whole assurance of legal title to 
a valid succession — is each individual elector's own 
pledge of honor to vote in the college as he was 
chosen to vote in November. 

The original provisions of our Constitution, indeed, 
were soon found so faulty with respect to Presidential 
elections in other particulars, that after the famous 
tie vote in 1800, between Jefferson and Burr, when 
President and Vice-President were not named apart, 
those provisions had to be amended. But two prime 
evils of the original plan still confront us, showing 
how utterly unsuited are those provisions to the 
present republican age : (1) Colleges of electors still 
elect the Executive ; and consequently the choice of 
a Chief Magistrate is not legally made in early 
November, but about a month later ; and in addition 
to the injurious delay, the voter who casts his ballot 
for electors at the polls is exposed not only to j)eculiar 
misconceptions concerning his own functions, but to 
the far more insidious danger that corrupt and crafty 
politicians may yet, at some later crisis, when voting 
runs close, baffle the wishes of the people. (2) Nor 
does a plurality of votes, even in the electoral col- 
leges, finally elect the President ; for the Constitution 
still adheres to the eighteenth-centur}^ rule requiring 
a complete majority, in default of which the eventual 
choice devolves upon the Legislature, or rather upon 
one branch of it. To this latter solecism, common 
enough in State politics a hundred years ago, but 
long since repudiated upon bitter State experience, 
public attention has not been drawn as it should be. 



REFORM m PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. 163 

All American experience is to the practical conclusion 
that, desirable though a majority choice must always 
be, it is much better to let the candidate who has a 
popular plurality on the first trial at the polls come 
in over all competitors, than to vote over again, or to 
refer the ultimate selection of a Cliief Magistrate 
elsewhere. 

Nor is it to an incoming Congress, but to a retiring 
one, and often in effect to a defeated and dishonored 
one, — and in fact, to a House of Representatives, 
voting by States, which was constituted two years 
earlier, — that our Federal plan confides this moment- 
ous choice of a President whenever no candidate has 
received an electoral majority. What State would 
trust any assembly for so solemn an arbitrament short 
of that Legislature which was chosen at the time 
when the Executive was voted for? Our national 
perils in this respect have been less only because the 
national choice was more seldom ; but with each new 
election the results at stake become more tremendous 
and the temptation to trifle with public opinion more 
pronounced. Whenever, as happened in 1892 and 
may happen again, some third party is strong enough 
to carry a State or two, or political issues have tem- 
porarily faded out, and the choice lies chiefly as 
among individuals, "bargain and corruption" may 
once more be the cry over an election by the House, 
as it was in 1825, and with far more substantial 
reason. Two years ago, during the last Presidential 
canvass, and while the chances appeared close in 
October, two distinct conspiracies, for forestalling 
final results and controlling the succession lest the 
choice should devolve upon a House already Demo- 
cratic, were divulged by the press to augment the 
popular uneasiness. One was for the friends of the 



164 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

third candidate to keep an eventual election for 
the colleges to decide in December, by causing tlieir 
own Presidential electors to invite bids for Populist 
principles from the two highest candidates, and then 
turn the scales as between them. The other plan 
was from another quarter, to resist all choice by the 
House as then constituted, upon the claim that its 
representation had not been based upon the new 
census of 1890, and ought, therefore, to be changed. 
From such dangers, which might otherwise have 
become positive ones, a sweeping majority of electoral 
votes for Mr. Cleveland delivered us. 

Still another Constitutional change is highly desir- 
able in the same connection, and, I might add, for all 
our biennial elections to Congress, in order to give 
symmetry to our national system of government and 
to adapt it to this modern age. We should abridge 
the present long interval which elapses between the 
popular vote and the entrance of a new Administra- 
tion and a new Congress upon their several responsi- 
bilities. Considering that a new Presidency lasts 
but four years and the term of a new Congress but 
half that time, our present waste of national energy 
is very great, and needlessly so. We have profited 
much in the advance of popular suffrage by leaving 
tests and qualifications in all national voting to State 
discretion. We have gained in national concentra- 
tion by compelling a uniform day to be observed 
throughout the Union for choosing the Presidential 
electors. But another change still more desirable 
(could only a Constitutional amendment be had) 
would be to bring a newly elected Administration 
more speedily into power, and a newly chosen House 
of Representatives and Congress besides. 

Ever since 1804, "the fourth of March," originally 



REFORM IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS. 165 

an accidental date, has been graven into the very 
tablet of our Federal Constitution. That day of the 
month and year, with its variable weather, is hardly 
suitable in the Potomac latitude for out-of-door 
pageants and parades, as we well know. In fact, 
inauguration weather at Washington on the two 
latest occasions was as unfit as possible for the mili- 
tary procession and the ceremonials at the east front 
of the capitol. But what then ? Some have seriously 
proposed, in propitiation of the weather, that the 
Constitution be so amended as to inaugurate each 
new Executive toward the close of spring. But this 
would be reform in the wrong direction. Mere cere- 
monials, anjrwhere or at any time, are liable to 
capricious weather, and may readily conform to cir- 
cumstances. The paramount interest, however, of 
the people of this Union is to have their declared will 
carried expeditiously into effect; and from that pre- 
ferable point of view, whatever Constitutional amend- 
ment substitutes some other date for the fourth of 
March will require America's inauguration day to be 
moved backward and not forward. 

Constitutional reforms are, indeed, difficult to 
carry; but this is, more than anything else, because 
the people are not aroused to considering them. 
Where the change proposed is not likely to excite 
party opposition, nor to inflame State or sectional 
jealousy, it is worthy, at least, of consideration and 
effort. State constitutions have borne much salutary 
improvement; and we ought not to persuade our- 
selves that constructive inspiration in whatever per- 
tains to the welfare and stability of the whole Union 
perished with the Revolutionaiy fathers. Let us set 
ourselves, then, to rej)airing the weak joints of this 
constitutional armor, where almost all else is strong. 



166 HISTORICAL BRIEFS. 

* 

The present basis for an electoral proportion by 
States has its merits and need not be exchanged for a 
numerical poll of the whole Union; but, in either 
case, we should sweep out, once and for all, this 
dangerous and superfluous electoral college, and set 
each State to devoting the month which follows the 
November vote to its own official registry of State 
results. We should abolish the present intervention 
of a House of Representatives, or reduce it to the 
remote contingency of a tie between the candidates, 
trusting, as in State elections, to the rule that a 
popular plurality shall elect, once and for all. The 
House of Representatives, and the Congress, to revise 
results and formally announce the choice, should be 
the incoming and newly chosen, and not the out- 
going, one; and all concerting opportunity for mis- 
chief between a Congress and an Administration 
already delegated to retirement — all such opportunity 
as embarrassed and paralyzed the country so greatly 
in 1860 if not in 1876 — should be reduced to a mini- 
mum. With a month gained by the abolition of 
electoral colleges, it would not be difficult for a newly 
chosen Congress to enter upon its functions at New 
Year's; and for the new Executive in alternate 
Congresses to be installed then or soon after, follow- 
ing the common example of the States. An adjourn- 
ment of Congress, long enough to give a new 
President time to make up his Administration and 
formulate a policy, might perhaps be provided; but 
the United States is scarcely a representative govern- 
ment at all, if j)ublic agents elected to meet existing 
conditions must invariably begin their work under 
later ones, at the same time that they are liable 
to stand long in the way after they have been 
superseded. 



BIOGRAPHY. 



BIOGKAPHY. 



They who counselled the present collection of 
fugitive essays, thrown off in the intervals of a more 
laborious occupation, have wished it accompanied by 
a biographical sketch of the author more complete 
and confiding than the Cyclopedia is supposed to 
contain. They have claimed that the memoir of one 
who, in spite of peculiar drawbacks, has gained 
already so just renown in the triple pursuits of law, 
history, and University instruction, deserves to be 
written out. Many among the thousands who have 
studied with profit one or another of his books or 
listened to his class lectures, desire to know some- 
thing more regarding the methods of work and the 
personal experience of a scholar whose prodigious 
industry and productiveness they better apprehend 
than the actual course of his somewhat secluded life. 
And there are others who ask information concerning 
the author's father, — a prominent figure in American 
journalism and politics for so many years, and 
Adjutant-General of Massachusetts through the Civil 
War, but whose memory since his death has been 
fading into oblivion. A disposition to gratify such 
wishes should not be ascribed to personal vanity; 
but rather to a genuine desire to be helpful. It is 
not necessarily the most romantic and adventurous 



170 BIOGRAPHY. 

lives that call for descrijition. There is room besides 
for heroic example in the pathway which lies beaten 
by common travel. The silent power is often found 
the strong power. Triumph over obstacles remains 
the theme that most strongly appeals to the human 
heart ; and such triumphs should be the lasting theme 
of biography. 

James Schouler, the subject of our present 
sketch, was born in West Cambridge (now Arling- 
ton), Massachusetts, on the 20th of March, 1839, the 
second of a family of five children, and the oldest son 
of William and Frances Eliza (Warren) Schouler. 
So singular a surname has misled many as to its 
spelling and pronunciation; and the more so in these 
later years, when we find the German stock entering 
so largely into American life, and the German lan- 
guage and literature so familiar. Not unfrequently 
the first three letters of this surname receive the soft 
German sound, as though the word were some varia- 
tion of the German "Schuler." The hard sound is 
the proper one, and the word if fully Americanized 
would be "School-er." For the real surname is not 
German but Scotch; its true Scotch spelling is 
"Scouler," and while our author comes of good 
Massachusetts and Revolutionary stock in the mater- 
nal line, he belongs on his father's side to the first 
generation of the family born on American soil.^ 
"My paternal grandfather," he writes, "from whom 
I am named, and who first brought our ' Scoulers ' to 
America, appears to have judiciously adopted for 
a while the American spelling of 'Schooler;' but 

^ Other Scotch " Scoullcrs," it appears, have established them- 
selves in America at one time or another. There is a Pennsylvania 
family, for instance, which traces its emigration to 1752 from Lanark- 
shire. 



BIOGRAPHY. 171 

about the time his sons grew to manhood and he him- 
self became a person of some property and conse- 
quence — partly perhaps as the result of a visit which 
he then made to the old country and his Scotch 
relatives — our surname on this side of the water 
acquired its present hybrid form, complimentary to 
both Scotland and America, but characteristic of 
neither. I should have gone back to one or another of 
the former modes of spelling, when striking into man- 
hood for myself, had not the American ' Schoulers ' 
by that time become so fairly rooted in popular 
renown that filial respect forbade new experiments in 
nomenclature." 

The " Scoulers " are still to be found in Scotland, 
and in the region, more especially, of Glasgow, 
Paisley, and Ayr, though scattered elsewhere about 
the lowlands where probably they are indigenous. 
Slight variations of this spelling may be traced, such 
as "Scoular" or "Scouller." One of the more dis- 
tinguished of this family, who was entertained in 
Glasgow at a public dinner about half a century ago, 
stated in a speech that he could trace the Scoulers 
back in Scotland for two hundred years ; but the race 
appears to have been modest and self-respecting on 
the whole, rather than illustrious, and not much 
given to boasting of pedigree. Probably the Scotch 
"Scouler" or "Scoler," like the German "Schuler," 
has the same root as the English "Scholar;" and it 
is certainly a family tradition that the Scoulers, what- 
ever may have been their educational disadvantage, 
in any sense, are much given to books and reading, 
— a trait which is strikingly exemplified in various 
instances on this side of the water. Reading and 
writing, as Dogberry would say, seem to come to 
them by instinct. Indeed, the Scouler coat-of-arms, 



172 BIOGRAPHY. 

wliicli some Glasgow mercliants of the family dis- 
played fifty years ago, exhibits a hand holding an 
open book, with the accompanying motto "Pro 
virtute; " a crest which would indicate a strong pre- 
dilection for the arts of peace. But as the high-born 
Scottish chiefs of old were always given to war, or at 
least to brawling, we may assume, perhaps, without 
diving into Scotch genealogy, that the Scoulers are 
of no great lineage on their native soil, but a plebeian 
race of bread-winners, supplying to the world the 
usual plebeian complement of plain farmers, artisans, 
and merchants, with now and then a trained profes- 
sional man of marked ability who holds his head 
above the rest. Marriage alliances of the Scoulers 
with more illustrious families, such as the Macarthurs 
and Macallisters have produced some Scotchmen of 
distinction: such, for instance, as the Hon. Arthur 
Macallister of recent memory, who went out to 
Australia and was twice made Premier of Queensland. 
He was a near connection of our author's father, and 
born about the same year. But a still nearer connec- 
tion and a closer contemporary, though born ten years 
earlier, was his first cousin, Professor John Scouler, 
who, so far as we can discover, gave to the Scotch 
patronymic more decided lustre than any one else in 
the old country who has yet borne it. He had a 
precocious bent to botany and natural history. He 
received the best of liberal training in Glasgow and 
Paris for his special pursuit, and was for some years 
Professor of Natural History in the Andersonian Uni- 
versity of Glasgow, and afterwards Professor of 
Mineralogy of the Royal Dublin Society. He was 
President at one time of the Glasgow Geological 
Society. The degrees of Doctor of Medicine and 
Doctor of Laws were conferred upon him. He made 



BIOGRAPHY. 173 

important scientific discoveries in the region of the 
Columbia River while on an expedition with the 
Hudson's Bay Company; and the large illustrated 
History of Glasgow refers to him repeatedly on local 
points as an eminent authorit}^ in archaeology. His 
bust, which is still preserved in the library of the 
Andersonian University, shows a strong profile resem- 
blance to our author's father, with whom in later life 
he carried on an interesting correspondence- over 
the family history, which has been unfortunately 
destroyed. ^ 

Professor John Scouler was buried in a corner of 
the quiet churchyard of Kilbarchan, where the remains 
of his wife (who died soon after marriage) and of his 
parents are also interred, the spot being marked to 
this day by a plain monument. From this same 
Kilbarchan went forth the " Schoulers " (as now 
entitled) to the United States. It is a small, peace- 
ful village of about twenty-six hundred souls, acces- 
sible to the populous manufacturing town of Paisley 
in the same county, and about ten miles distant from 
Glasgow. An omnibus which toils along an up-hill 
road conveys passengers thither nowadays from the 
nearest railroad station. Kilbarchan has at present 
the not uncommon aspect in the Scotch lowlands of a 
sturdy village which has seen better days — though 
never very good ones — when humble hand- weaving 

1 The letters received on this subject by General William Schooler 
were doubtless contained in an office desk, which was consumed in 
the great Boston fire of 1872, a few weeks after his death. His son 
read most of them when they arrived and remembers tlieir substance. 
Professor Scouler died in 1871, a year earlier than his American 
kinsman and correspondent. A full sketch of his life is contained in 
Glasgow Geolog Soc. Transactions (1873), and his papers on tlie 
Columbia River expedition are to be found in the Edinburgh Journal 
of Science for 1826. 



174 BIOGRAPHY. 

flourished and the printing of cloths by the block 
method, pursuits both favorable to village industry 
before the large towns sucked in the rural population. 
Its long rows of little stone cottages defy the ravages 
of time; while its two kirks, the "Established 
Presbyterian" and "United Presbyterian," symbolize 
that freedom of discussion which divided the Scotch 
communities long years ago in religious creeds. 
Kilbarchan has its inn, the "Black Bull," kept after 
a country home fashion, with a bar served by women 
folk. It boasts, too, a new town-house which stands 
in presumptuous contrast with the old and forsaken 
one, and rears a high white tower. 

In this little village during the last and culminat- 
ing years of England's tremendous struggle with 
Napoleon — and while, too, as a minor enemy the 
mother country was fighting in a second unwelcome 
war the United States — dwelt two Scouler brothers, 
engaged in carrying on together a calico-printing 
factory of the sort then common, within an easy team- 
ing distance from the market town of Paisley. 
William, the older brother, was father of the young 
naturalist of whom we have spoken; while James, 
the younger, was the destined emigrant and founder 
of an American race. William owned the factory, 
being a man of large means, enhanced by his pros- 
perous marriage to a daughter of the Glasgow 
INIacarthurs, a noted family. James held a respon- 
sible place in managing the business ; and he, too, 
had liappily married in Glasgow, his wife being 
JNIargaret Clark, a woman of superior endowments 
and family, 1 whose strong character bore well the 

1 Margaret Clark used to visit an aunt at Stirling, who lived upon 
an ancestral estate granted by King Robert Bruce for distinguished 
services. 



BIOGRAPHY. 175 

test of vicissitudes in store for her. James's dwell- 
ing-house in KilLarchan was a spacious and comfort- 
able two-story stone house which he probably rented. 
It was near the village, on a rising slope, with hills 
seen undulating in the distance, which are now 
studded by residences of the Scotch gentry, and 
afford fine views for miles about. Here were born 
in succession three sons and a daughter, the third 
son being William, our author's father, who first saw 
the light of day on the 31st of December, 1814. 
"Fore-house," as this family mansion is styled in 
modern years, still stands almost unaltered in out- 
ward aspect since James Scouler lived there, except 
for more modern plate-glass windows. A high stone 
wall separates it from the road ; and entering the gates 
either by the pretty carriage-drive or on the long 
gravel walk, one sees among fine trees, and beyond 
a rich green lawn, naturally sloping, on which sheep 
browse lazily, a solid house of a slate-colored stone, 
with substantial steps and a stone portico, honestly 
and squarely facing the road, with a green hedge 
just in front of it, and a kitchen garden flanked by a 
high wall in its rear. 

The circumstances under which our American 
progenitor left his thriving business in Scotland and 
this pleasant and attractive abode, to expatriate him- 
self and settle among strangers across the ocean, were 
peculiar and highly creditable to him. It was in 
1816 that the change in question occurred, and just 
at a period of wedded life when one's domestic roots 
begin to strike deepest; for James Scouler, born in 
1786, was by this time at manhood's full stage, and 
father of a growing family. Political reasons were 
the occasion, as a Scotch obituary notice hinted at 
his death; but during his life, so reticent had he 



176 BIOGRAPHY. 

been on the subject of his removal to America, that 
this hint was a surprise to his own children. "He 
told me the whole story," relates our present author, 
" about the time I graduated from college ; and had I 
then thought how closely he had kept his secret, I 
would have written down the details at once. As 
his namesake and oldest grandson, and a liberally 
educated youth besides, he perhaps meant to show 
me an especial confidence. It appears that the 
Scotch brothers, William and James, differed strongly 
in politics, William being a Tory conservative, while 
James was a liberal and attended liberal clubs. In 
1815 or thereabouts some plot against the government 
was in progress (and as my impression is, a liberal 
one) which had its ramifications in my grandfather's 
vicinity. He found himself one night in a store with 
others. The shutters were closed, and treasonable 
plans promulgated. Grandfather listened to all he 
coukl bear, and then put on his hat and left the 
meeting. ' I cannot, ' said he plainly to the others, 
' raise my hand against my King and country ! ' 
Whatever the plot it failed ignominiously, and the 
officers of the law were soon in pursuit of the parties 
implicated, desiring to capture grandfather as a 
government witness. Hearing of this he fled, unwil- 
ling, as he strongly expressed himself to me, to help 
put a halter on the neck of any personal friends ; and 
facilitated b}^ those who dreaded his testimony, he 
kept in hiding for a week and was then smuggled out 
of Scotland in a small sailing-vessel bound for the 
United States. His wife, who knew neither why nor 
whither he had gone, bore her first daughter not long 
after his departure. More precise details of my 
grandfather's story may have escaped my memory; 
but the main facts evincing his own attitude to the 



BIOGRAPHY. Ill 

political plot in question, whatever that plot might 
have been, are just as he related them in his own 
vivid and impressive manner, and with the aspect of 
perfect honesty. ' When I first came to the United 
States,' he added, ' I only expected to stay a few 
months until the trouble blew over. I had no idea 
that I should make this country my permanent 
home.'" 

II. 

The emigrant and grandfather, James Schouler, 
— to whose surname we may henceforth give his final 
American spelling, — landed in New York City when 
about thirty years old, an utter stranger, without 
letters and with little money. This was at the time 
when our people, jubilant over an honorable peace 
with Great Britain, had just begun to repair the 
ravages of war. Business shook off its long stagna- 
tion and sought new enterprises. Like most emi- 
grants who keep their self-respect, our present one 
looked first of all for honest work; but the solitary 
search did not bring quick results. Being, however, 
a good musician, he would go down to North River 
in the evening and play for solace upon his flute; 
and while thus occupied, he attracted the notice of a 
benevolent citizen, who opened conversation with 
him, and on learning his wishes procured for him a 
first situation. 

The employment, we may imagine, was humble 
enough ; but James entered upon his work with such 
a will that before the lapse of many months he had 
concluded himself capable of making a living in this 
new world, and sent for his wife and children to join 
him. Of their voyage in 1816 (or possibly 1817) 

12 



178 BIOGRAPHY. 

more is kno^vn in the family than of his own. They 
left Scotland in a ship which occupied seven weeks 
in crossing the Atlantic; and a young physician on 
board, their fellow-passenger, showed great kindness 
to the mother by entertaining her two older boys, 
John and Robert, while she was nursing little William 
(or "Wallie," as she alwaj^s called him) and her 
infant daughter Jane. Reunited in this land of adop- 
tion, the family followed loyally the husband and 
father, in such wanderings for the next fifteen years 
as his trade might require, and from one new home 
to another. In Brooklyn little Jane died. But the 
three sons who had crossed the Atlantic survived to 
v\\)Q manhood. Two more daughters and another son 
were born to the same parents in the United States; 
and each son and daughter marrying in due course 
and rearing a family of American grandchildren, our 
Scotch progenitor made good his transfer of faith and 
allegiance to the United States. 

James Schouler, the grandfather, was a man of 
industry and perseverance and of perfect sobriety, 
and he kept a steady regard for his opportunities in 
life, cheered constantly, as he was through the whole 
straitened period, by his admirable helpmate, who 
bore all hardships with courage and good humor. 
Learning presently that calico print-works were to be 
set up at Staten Island, he offered himself for employ- 
ment; and the proprietor, quickly perceiving him to 
l)e no common workman, but one who understood the 
business and had conducted it abroad, gave him at 
once a good position and salary. Here Schouler 
would have been contented to remain ; but he found 
the climate of the neighborhood unhealthy, and chills 
and fever were the consequence. Warned already by 
death in the family, he resolved to leave ; and the pro- 



BIOGRAPHY. 179 

■ prietor, unwilling to lose him, then offered a partner- 
ship. "I would not take your whole factory," was 
his reply, "at the cost of my wife and children;" 
and he removed from New York State to Massachu- 
setts. Here employed for a few years longer on a 
salary, in mills at Taunton and Lynn, he prepared to 
set up cloth print-works of his own and become him- 
self an employer. He bought for $2,100 in March, 
1832, a mill site which pleased him, in the town of 
West Cambridge, T\ith a water privilege from an 
upper pond, and a factory and dwelling-house already 
built; mortgaging the premises to secure about half 
the purchase-money. Here settling with his family 
at an opportune time, he soon began to make money 
and established a handsome business. The county 
land records, which preserve his first purchase as made 
by "James Schooler of Lynn, calico printer," show in 
the course of the next twenty years many more real- 
estate transactions which indicate that this new free- 
holder of the town grew rapidly in wealth and 
extended his thriving business. The site of these 
picturesque red factories, multiplied by his energy, 
down in the hollow through which ran the mill 
stream, can be still identified in Arlington, while his 
mansion on the upland, with porches and a pillared 
piazza, which stood at the right-hand side of the high- 
road to Lexington, guarding the factory and its lane 
like a sentry of the Revolution, is yet visible ; but 
the factories themselves were destroyed by accidental 
fire some years ago and the rubbish cleared awa}'. 
While directing the new business which he had 
brought to West Cambridge, he equipped his mills 
throughout with cloth-printing machinery, and a 
water-wheel supplied the motive power. 

But the immigrant Schouler brought with him one 



180 BIOGRAPHY. 

Scotch trait with which our American over-ambition 
stands in sharp contrast; and this was to achieve a 
safe competence and then retire contentedly and enjoy 
through old age the well-earned fruits of personal 
industry. This period he fixed soon after reaching 
fifty; and to his sons, by that time grown up, he 
turned over his flourishing business and sought 
recreation and a change of scene. About the year 
1838 he revisited Scotland and his foreign relatives, 
bringing back with him among other curiosities wax 
impressions of the Scotch family crest to wliich we 
have referred, and profiting possibly by that renewal 
of family acquaintance, as well as his pecuniary inde- 
pendence, to conform the spelling of his American 
surname more closely to the Scotch standard. Unwil- 
ling upon his return to remain entirely idle, he 
bought another mill site and mansion at tranquil 
Burlington, a few miles beyond Lexington, making 
this his place of residence while he dallied with his 
former pursuit just enough to make idleness less irk- 
some, and then he moved back to West Cambridge. 
Here his wife, the long partner of his joys and tribu- 
lations, died July 24, 1851, at the age of sixty-three; 
and life among the familiar surroundings then grew 
to him so intolerable that he soon returned to New 
York State, and for the remnant of his long life 
resided in the little town of Westchester, not far 
from the great metropolis and the scenes which had 
witnessed his first struggle for a livelihood in this 
new world. He retained still the legal title to the 
factory premises at West Cambridge, selling out his 
Burlington property ; and he would come occasionally 
to Massachusetts to visit his sons and daughters, 
whose homes, like their interests in life, had begun 
to diverge. 



BIOGRAPHY. 181 

Our present author records a first and only visit 
which he paid to his grandfather in this Westchester 
home. "It was in April, 1860," he writes, "and 
nearly a year after I had graduated from college, that 
I left New York by the trim paddle-steamboat with a 
sentimental name, the ' Sylvan Shore,' and at the 
Harlem landing-place in early afternoon entered a 
lumbering stage which took me on to West Farms. 
Thence I proceeded on foot to Westchester, not very 
far distant, and by inquiring the way soon found the 
house. Its situation was pretty, and the mansion a 
snug one for a quiet old couple. Domestic com- 
panionship, I may here remark, had proved so essen- 
tial to grandfather's comfort in life that he had by 
this time married again and brought into his house- 
hold a good woman, of congenial Scotch connections 
and about his own age, whose anxious solicitude for 
her worshipful spouse was constantly visible. Both 
received me very kindly, and I mad& over night a 
charming visit. The grave simplicity and force of 
grandfather's conversation was never so felt by me as 
on this evening, when we sat together and he appeared 
in his best mood. A man of habitual reticence, who 
never wasted words on any one, he felt perhaps a 
special disposition at this time to express himself. I 
was a favorite grandson, and he cherished some 
appreciation perhaps of the peculiar dignity attaching 
to my college diploma. Our discourse turned much 
upon life, — I looking forward to it and he looking 
back; and, having an excellent memory, he recited 
in a manner that much impressed me, with his Scotch 
accent and melodious voice, a part of that essay by 
Goldsmith which begins, ' Old age that lessens the 
enjoyment of life increases the desire of living.' 
Another passage which, in connection Avith American 



182 BIOGRAPHY. 

politics, he quoted at length from Scott's ' Qiientiu 
Durward, ' so sank into my thoughts that I looked it 
up afterwards and found it in the sixteenth chapter. 
It is where the hero of the novel carries on an argu- 
mentative dialogue with the vagrant who has no 
home, no country, no religion; but who claims, as 
sufficiently remaining for his recompense, ' 1 have 
liberty.' In the course of the evening I played at 
his request upon the piano; and presently when I 
struck into an andante from one of Mozart's sonatas 
which he liked, he brought his flute and played the 
air as he stood by me." 

So far as the world took notice of him, Schouler 
was a plain business man; and the three business 
traits which marked him and contributed most to his 
success were good judgment, perseverance, and thor- 
ough honesty. There Avas a genuineness about him, 
an unassuming self-respect, which inspired confidence ; 
so that where he needed money for his projects he 
raised it readily and repaid with punctuality. He 
was high-principled, true as steel, faithful to what- 
ever interests might have been committed to him. 
But he was not like our American men of business, 
wdio make great haste and try to achieve the colossal. 
He had no wide range of ambition; but a "wee 
house," a " wee fortune," contented him. He minded 
his own affairs, and was willing that others should do 
likewise. We have already noted his disposition to 
leave money-making when he had made enough to 
retire upon ; the devotion of his last long years to a 
rustic domestic ease, to tranquil independence and 
tranquil self-improvement. His just sense of right 
put bounds to toil, and gave to individual success its 
due reward. He deemed it enough for his sons that 



BIOGRAPHY. 183 

lie handed over to them the business that he had 
so well established, at a time when they all might 
make together a living from it. He did not choose, 
for his own part, to slave all his life for posterity, 
nor to leave an ambitious fortune for idlers to dissi- 
pate. He remained Scotch, too, in eschewing all 
tricks for increasing his own estate by overreaching 
others. For that American "booming," as we call it 
in later years, he had no turn ; nor for over-praising 
the qualities of a thing and concealing its faults, so 
as to drive a sharp bargain. At one time after he 
had given up the mills, he was induced to go into a 
Boston partnership in wholesale dry goods, as his 
eldest son did later. But he soon took his capital 
out of the concern, disgusted with the prevalent 
trade methods. "I couldn't lie and I couldn't 
steal," he would say afterwards, "and so I left the 
business." 

Whether in household or social relations, grand- 
father Schouler was the same sober individual, 
sensible, self-respecting, and tenacious of his own 
opinions. He kept up through life his fondness for 
the simple customs and the simple people of his native 
land , and he employed in his factories many who had 
come over from the lowlands like liimself, maintain- 
ing his authority all the while by a certain reserve of 
manner, at the same time that his quiet, unobtrusive 
interest was kindness itself. The great minds of 
Scotland were his constant admiration. Burns and 
Walter Scott he read through and through ; and his 
ideal of worldly happiness seemed comprehended, as 
so many Scotch songs have expressed it, -udthin the 
"ingleside " and its domestic accompaniments. And 
yet, though by no means unsocial with callers or his 
own family, he was rather taciturn and seldom if 



184 BIOGRAPHY. 

ever jocular of speech and familiar. Except when 
stirred to elevated expression, he was simple and 
judicious, listening readily to others, giving his 
opinion in a few fitting words, if asked for it, but not 
given to trifling discourse, slang, or gossip. But it 
was easy to see that he appreciated more than he 
expressed; and to his grandchildren, at least, who 
stood somewhat in awe of him, he would show by 
some little attention that he was not unthouofhtful of 
their happiness. They never saw him in a passion 
nor thrown off his balance of equanimity on one side 
or the other; but when highly pleased his grave 
features relaxed into a smile, and when something 
went wrong he would vent his displeasure by a severe 
and caustic remark, whose effect was heightened by 
a tight compression of his thin lips and a peculiar 
clucking of the tongue within. His whole aspect 
was that of the master and disciplinarian, though a 
just one certainly, and after his own silent fashion a 
kind one. 

All this was much in contrast with his wife, the 
mother of his children. She was a woman of decided 
strength of character and an admirable complement of 
such a husband, to temper his justice with mercy and 
loving-kindness and make him respected by the world 
to the utmost. Though not educated beyond Scotch 
women of her day, nor possessed of any marked 
accomplishment, she was an admirable housekeeper 
and manager of a family. She had strong native 
talent, was merry and bright under all vicissitudes of 
life, entertained admirably with her conversation, 
which turned much upon her varied personal acquaint- 
ance and experience, and liad a great faculty for 
drawing out and making friends of whomsoever she 
might encounter. She was full of good-humor, and 



BIOGRAPHY. 185 

could make others listen to her and laugh by the 
hour. Her sons have been heard to express the love 
and gratitude which they felt for her beyond all 
others. While she lived she held up the children to 
their best and kept the family united, and after she 
died the strong bond of union was forever gone and 
missing. Such of her grandchildren as lived early 
enough to know her, welcomed her family visits, 
which were apt to be sudden ones ; for with her jovial 
greeting she always brought them some present or 
another. And her generosity and good deeds among 
her neighbors, which fortunately her husband's means 
after a time enabled her to bestow liberally, so 
endeared her to the people of West Cambridge that 
it seemed as if the whole town, rich and poor, poured 
out to attend her funeral. 

The early home life of the Schoulers in this town 
of West Cambridge is described by the surviving 
daughters. They and their friends would gather 
round the mother in a room upstairs and frolic to 
their hearts' content, while the father passed his 
evening by himself, reading or playing on the flute ; 
but whenever they Avanted him to play for a dance 
he was ready to gratify them. His love of music 
and his skilful playing were remarkable for an 
amateur not much instructed ; and his soul was full 
of Scotch ditties grave and gay, of marches, reels, 
and mournful minor dirges, in great variety, which 
he had constantly at command to pour out through 
the hollow of his silver-keyed instrument with the 
aid of his nimble fingers. His oldest granddaughter 
grew to be a great favorite with him, because she 
not only had a responsive heart, but loved the music 
that he loved and could play it for him upon the 
piano. 



186 BIOGRAPHY. 

Grandfather and grandmother Schoiiler were a 
pleasing pair, and in aspect and accent of speech 
bespoke their Scottish origin. She had a dark and 
sympathetic eye, strongly marked features, more 
furrowed through hard experience than her hus- 
band's, and a face which beamed kindly out from one 
of those old-fashioned ruffled caps which seemed 
inseparable from her. He was a man of medium 
height, perhaps five feet eight, compactly built, and 
looking like one who would hold his own with any 
man and ask no more. Plis hair was plentiful, inclin- 
ing to gray ringlets. His features had the Schouler 
cast, observable since in others of the family, with 
the outline of a handsome forehead, nose, and chin. 
His mouth was firm-set and secretive; his eye a 
penetrating blue ; and his whole expression, of which 
a razored face left no concealment, was that of a self- 
contained man, who had been schooled into sternness 
and almost severity by the stress of circumstances. 
Yet though Scotch of aspect, and of sound moral 
principle, there was no tinge of rigid Scotch intoler- 
ance about either of the pair. They seemed, indeed, 
to fit into their later surroundings better than their 
earlier ones. The husband was Republican in senti- 
ment, a believer in equal rights, and as soon as our 
Civil War ])roke out he called in some money he had 
out on mortgage and invested it in United States 
bonds. Yet he would sometimes speak with con- 
tempt of the men who managed the politics in his 
New York vicinity, as scorning to have them for his 
masters. He was of irreproachable habits; always 
temperate in drink, though not a teetotaler; a snuff- 
taker, but not otherwise much addicted to tobacco; 
moderate in all things and under strong self-control. 
In religious belief he affiliated chiefly with the Uni- 



BIOGRAPHY. 187 

versalists ; and of the whole family that he brought 
up not one strayed back to the old Presbyterian faith 
of Kilbarchan. 

Our exemplary emigrant died at "Westchester, 
February 24, 1864, at the age of seventy-seven. His 
remains were brought on to (West Cambridge) 
Arlington to be laid in tenderness by those of the 
wife who had been the friend of his active years. 
The life we have described was not historically con- 
spicuous nor ever dreamed to become so. It is paral- 
leled in America by doubtless many others; but of 
such hidden fountains come the springs that nourish 
this land of opportunities into greatness. This 
Scotch founder of a new family in the new world had 
accomplished something. Landing in our chief sea- 
port friendless and penniless, he had begun a new 
prime, leaving the earlier one of equal promise behind 
him. He had in a quarter of a century achieved here 
a competence, to enjoy it for another quarter of a 
century. A troop of bright and promising grand- 
children gathered at his funeral. His two daughters, 
both American born, had married merchants of local 
wealth and eminence. His eldest son, at whose 
house the last ceremonies took place, had grown up 
with the town, and as one of its foremost citizens in 
all enterprises had received its highest honors as 
selectman and in both branches of the Legislature. 
His third son, also present at the funeral, was now a 
Massachusetts military officer, second only to the 
Governor himself in sending Massachusetts regi- 
ments to the front and guarding well their interests. 
In the quiet Arlington cemetery on the Medford 
road, from whose hill one might look towards the 
cro'v^Tiing scenes of his life's labor, James Schouler 



188 BIOGRAPHY. 

was committed to his last mortal resting-place. Two 
marble slabs side by side commemorate husband and 
wife; and on the headstone of the former is an in- 
scription suggested probably by himself as an emblem 
of his simple creed, "God our Father, Christ our 
Saviour." 

III. 

1839-1846. 

We have seen that William (afterwards Adjutant- 
General of Massachusetts), the father of our present 
author, and the third son of James and Margaret 
Clark Schouler (or Scouler), was born in Kilbarchan, 
Scotland, on the last day of 1814, and in early infancy 
was brought over to America by his mother, with 
three other children. ^ Except for these immediate 
parental influences, his youthful memories and asso- 
ciations were American from the cradle, as was also 
his education ; but through life he cherished a romantic 
fondness for his native land, its statesmen, its war- 
riors, and its literature, and hailed as doubly brethren 
all who bore their credentials of origin from the same 
rugged soil. Once and only once, in early manhood, 
he found opportunity to revisit old Scotia, and it was 
the unfulfilled dream of his later life to revisit it 
again. 

Of William Schouler's experience in childhood 
very little is preserved, nor was the subject ever 
much alluded to in his own family. But we know 
that with his older brothers he followed his father's 
wanderings to Staten Island, Taunton, and Lynn for 
manual employment, pursuing, when at work, the 

1 See pages 175, 178. 



BIOGRAPHY. 189 

same trade. He acquired as he might, at one place 
or another, the elements of a good common-school 
education; and of his mother's helpful sympathy and 
encouragement all these years he has spoken to his 
own children with the utmost tenderness, as though 
no praise could be too great for her. In one racy 
and familiar speech which he made in the Massachu- 
setts Convention of 1853, as its reported Debates 
show, — a speech whose special purpose was to put 
the assembled body in good humor at a time when 
irritations were becoming very great, — he alluded 
with more freedom to his early life than was usual to 
him. And thus we find that he had worked while 
young in the mills "and pretty long hours, too; " that 
both he and his father had inclined politically to 
Whig rather than Jackson traditions ; and that tak- 
ing earnestly to political controversies when very 
young, he had been brought up and almost rocked in 
them, as he expressed it. We see, too, that his bent 
had been pronounced from childhood for books and 
self-improvement. "I have read," he says, "a little. 
I have read some authors in English politics. I have 
read some Grecian and Roman authors. It was the 
study of my youth, after mill hours were over, to 
read these books." ^ And thus had William Schouler, 
though to a considerable extent a self-made man, laid 
very broadly the foundations of public statesmanship 
by the time he was capable of voting, and gained a 
considerable mastery of the English language for 
fluent writing and speaking. 

William Schouler was in his eighteenth year when 
his father bought the West Cambridge factory and 
became a mill-owner for himself; and from that time 
forward the son's work in the mills was of course 

1 See Debates, Jlass. Convention, 1853, 639, 640. 



190 BIOGRAPHY. 

confined to a family establishment, of whicli he was 
presently to become a joint proprietor. He married 
October 6, 1835, in anticipation of pecuniary inde- 
pendence, about three months before attaining his 
majority; and his father, generous for him as for the 
other sons, gave a lot of land and built him a house 
as a wedding gift. It was the only home during his 
whole life which this son really owned. While still 
a resident of West Cambridge he bought an eligible 
building lot in another part of the town, and then 
removing from the town he sold out at once and for- 
ever all his real estate in the world. Frances Eliza 
Warren, born in West Cambridge, January 10, 1816, 
was thirteen months younger than her husband. 
Their match was a love match and their marriage a 
true companionship of hearts, scarcely in death to 
be divided. Frances was of a superior Middlesex 
County stock, identified with the English coloniza- 
tion of ]\Iassachusetts in 1630, and with the prowess 
of famous Lexington and Concord minute-men in the 
early Revolution, and connected not remotely with 
the noblest blood spilt at Bunker's Hill. Rev. Dr. 
Henry Cumings, for many years the parish pastor 
and leading citizen of Billerica, was her great-grand- 
father, d^dng in 1823.^ But simple and country 
bred, all this seemed of little consequence to her or 
her future station in life. She had been brought up 
as the ward of a leading citizen of West Cambridge, 
Colonel Thomas Russell, and while yet a girl she 
became engaged to the man of her choice in one of 
an emigrant race, new to the town, and newly pros- 
perous. Fortune was no gift on either side, but high 

1 See the " Genealogy of William Wilkins Warren," prepared and 
published for family information by her only brother ; and see also 
the well-known printed volume relating to tiie " AVarren family." 



BIOGRAPHY. 191 

aims, sound health, sound morals, and sound char- 
acter. Frances was bright, lovely in person and dis- 
position, accomplished for the times and localit}', an 
admirable housekeeper. Her lover appeared by con- 
trast tall, ungainly, homely, rather unconventional; 
but they grew into a handsome couple, he developing 
quickly the masculine graces, and no two natures 
ever proved more congenial. She became the con- 
scientious and devoted mother of his children, and 
no mother ever gained or deserved more devotion 
from children in return. Patterning herself after 
the Christian example, meek, domestic, and quiet in 
her tastes, self-sacrificing and caring little to shine, 
she moulded others for conspicuousness by the force 
of her gentle yet pervading will in the home circle. 

The wooden house which William Schouler had 
built for him and occupied is still to be seen on 
the Main Street of Arlington, midway between 
the railroad station and the former site of the fac- 
tories, though on the opposite side. It is a plain 
two-story mansion painted white, and still well- 
preserved; the hills are still seen rising in its rear, 
but the handsome trees which once shaded it in front 
have disappeared. Situated close to the sidewalk at 
a sharp turn of the road to Lexington, it seems to an 
approaching traveller journeying in that direction to 
stand across the highway on the left, as though to 
obstruct his passage ; but the optical effect diminishes 
as he draws nearer. To this house, then newly built, 
the young manufacturer brought his younger bride ; 
and within its walls were born to them in succession 
their three oldest children, Harriet, James, and 
William. James, the future historian, was born 
March 20, 1839, as already stated ; the other two in 
the years 1837 and 1841 respectively. 



192 BIOGRAPHY. 

As a resident of West Cambridge, William Schoiiler 
still followed with liis brothers the paternal calling 
until about twenty-seven years of age. But he had 
a soul above cloth-printing, and as a public-spirited, 
energetic, and popular man he inclined to solid litera- 
ture and politics. He was in much local demand for 
occasional addresses. Loathing always the Jefferson 
and Jackson school of national statesmen, and enthu- 
siastic for Clay, Webster, and Harrison, he joined 
heartily in promoting the good Whig cause through 
Middlesex County. He would write leaders for a 
little Whig newspaper in Concord which William S. 
Robinson, a young journalist of rising fame, then 
conducted; and in the great campaign of 1840, which 
carried " Old Tippecanoe " into the Presidency, he 
took an active part in the local speech-making and 
enthusiasm, recognized at once as a ready and effec- 
tive speaker among rural audiences. 

With this happy initiation into Bay State politics 
under the auspices of a new party, unlucky enough 
in its national triumphs, but immensely strong in the 
affection of Massachusetts while it lasted, William 
Schouler forsook West Cambridge and the red factory 
industry for the more congenial calling of journalism. 
He now bought the "Lowell Courier," and moved 
to the thriving city of spindles in 1842 to edit and 
publish it. With the help of young Robinson, who 
had printed his earlier effusions and now needed 
friendship, he made of it quite a famous Middlesex 
Whig paper. "Indeed," comments a veteran editor, 
" for those years from 1842 to 1846 we think it was 
the best piece of journalism in Massachusetts." Mid- 
dlesex County had been much demoralized by earlier 
political coalitions, and this Lowell paper now did 
much to bring honest voters round to the Whig 



BIOGRAPHY. 193 

cause. Though supporting in his paper Whig pro- 
tective principles, such as mightily pleased the great 
mill capitalists of this enterprising young city, 
Schouler regarded well the interests of the operative 
class among whom he had been brought up; and 
abominating all demagogues and stirrers of envy 
among the wage-earners, he gained great popularity 
by his honesty, tact, and generous dealing towards 
employers and the employed. While a resident of 
Lowell he was elected four times to the Massachusetts 
House of Representatives, extending his fame and 
personal acquaintance to the great civic centre of 
New England influence. Taking an active interest, 
moreover, in the militia in these early years, he was 
chosen Colonel of a Middlesex County regiment, and 
became known by one military title or another for 
the rest of his life. Two other sons of Massachusetts, 
who rose to greater national renown, may be men- 
tioned as his junior field officers, — Henry Wilson 
and Nathaniel P. Banks. Independent now in for- 
tune and in the control of his own newspaper. Colonel 
Schouler gave it, as editors usually did in those days, 
the flavor of his own personal qualities, which were 
genial humor, courtesy, and good sense. He carried 
on political controversies in his columns, and wrote 
pungent paragraphs against opponents without creat- 
ing personal enmity. He argued convincingly, but 
with candor and fairness ; and as a fellow-journalist 
has said of him, though full of amusing stories, and 
rich in conversation and good-hearted mimicry, he 
was incapable of ill-natured mirthfulness. Such was 
William Schouler through his whole editorial and 
political career, as developed in this earliest stage. 

The strong religious element in his character should 
not be overlooked. His children well understood it 

13 



194 BIOGRAPHY. 

and saw its purer image in his wife's unworldliness. 
Whatever may have been his frailties or temptations 
at any stage of Hfe, William Schouler had the strong 
root of Christian endeavor and philantliropy. The 
touching scenes of his last hours revealed its depth, 
and so did these earlier years of aspiring energy. In 
politics or journalism he was honorable and unselfish. 
At some young period of life he had become attached 
to the Episcopal Church and joined its communion, 
and his wife and children all embraced and were 
brought up in the same faith. This was a little 
singular; for the other Schoulers, not less strenuous 
in religious tenets, chose rather to be Unitarians or 
liberals, like modern proselytes of New England ; and 
a certain conservatism of political and social tempera- 
ment, perhaps a slight family estrangement, seems 
traceable in consequence. While a mere boy at 
Staten Island, William so endeared himself to an 
Episcopal clergyman there that the two rencAved a 
strong personal intimacy almost fifty years later on 
the strength of that brief acquaintance. While liv- 
ing at West Cambridge, William and his wife (whose 
relatives likewise were Unitarian) used to ride down 
on Sunday to old Christ Church near the colleges, 
whose rector. Rev. Nicholas Hoppin, baptized their 
three eldest children. When at Lowell the family 
joined the parish flock of Rev. Theodore Edson, and 
William was a zealous worker in St. Anne's Church, 
serving as Sunday-school teacher and superintendent. 
Both these two clergymen, when in venerable life, con- 
ducted the services by request at William Schouler's 
funeral; and Dr. Edson, a man of wonderful memory, 
recited at a lapse of nearly thirty years the incidents 
of his young parishioner's life and rare example at 
Lowell. "I suppose," said he, "there is no position 



BIOGRAPHY. 195 

so trying to a Christian cliaracter as that which he 
filled so satisfactorily to his friends, — the editor of 
a political paper. I had supposed it impossible for 
such a man to keep himself unspotted and to preserve a 
spirit so sweet as his. His mind was always unruffled 
by the perplexities and provocations of the position, 
and I came to the conclusion that he drew the spirit 
from a higher source than this world." 

Of his own first recollections as a child our present 
author writes: "The first consecutive incidents of 
boyhood I associate with Lowell ; and by the time we 
moved to our second house there, in Tyler Street, 
the course of my life begins to unfold as clearly as 
a panorama. I often visited Arlington (or West 
Cambridge) while a child after we had moved from 
the place, for my grandparents were still there, and 
uncles, aunts, and cousins had not begun to scatter; 
but being only about two years old when my father 
moved from the town, there is but one childish inci- 
dent connected with our residence there which I can 
recall. On one summer's afternoon I had lingered 
lonely about the house, missing my parents and sister, 
and most likely crying in my grief. Father presently 
appeared, and taking me on his shoulder, carried me 
some little distance across the street to a neighboring 
house, where a large party had collected in the 
garden; and crowing at sight of my mother and 
sister, I entered the company, looldng down from my 
lofty perch in glee and triumph. 

"The earliest distinct associations of one's child- 
hood seem to be with particular objects, such as wall- 
paper patterns, a blue mug, a coral rattle, or with 
particular faces growing out of primeval chaos, none 
of which one can connect with special incidents. 



196 BIOGRAPHY. 

Then come one or two scenes which the memory 
holds, cast permanently upon the retina of the inner 
mind like an instantaneous photograph. And thus, 
without any distinct remembrance of a house on 
Appleton Street where we first lived in Lowell, I 
remember a vesper service closing at the Roman 
Catholic Church on that street, to which my nurse 
had taken me ; and I still see the long-robed priest 
holding up something at the shrine of the high altar, 
while censers swung and a little bell was tinkling. 
So, too, visiting the Irish abode of this nurse on 
another occasion, I see her family paying me atten- 
tions ; and I recall the peculiar musty smell of another 
house, but nothing else. This nurse figures in my 
earliest recollections; and so does another and a 
Scotch one, most likely of some later date, who fright- 
ened me into a nightmare by showing me the picture 
of a celebrated New York murderess, Polly Bodine. 

"When we moved from West Cambridge I was 
about the same age that father had reached when 
leaving Kilbarchan and Scotland. From the time I 
became four years old, life and the identity of exist- 
ence stand out clear and continuous. The white 
wooden house on Tyler Street, one of a pair, with its 
pretty garden on the right-hand side of the entrance, 
which sloped behind in a grassy terrace, at whose 
edge grew hollyhocks and sunflowers, while morning- 
glories adorned the front entrance; the interior of 
the house, with its regular bedrooms and front stair- 
case in the main building, and its narrow entry of 
sleej)ing rooms and backstairs in the ell, while mid- 
way was the connecting chamber, where brother 
Willie and I occupied a trundle-bed; the aspect of 
the quiet street and of neighboring houses, with the 
cross-street visible at each end which marked our 



BIOGRAPHY. 197 

terminus, and the single outlet opposite our house 
towards Middlesex Mills, — of these and much more 
in our Lowell home surroundings the picture is as 
bright with its colors as though painted yesterday. 
Brother Willie and I played much together on the 
pavement, and attracted attention where we went, 
because dressed much alike in blue or Scotch plaid 
suits, and yet unlike in features ; I with straight dark 
hair and a high complexion, and he with a delicate 
face and golden locks, which were kept at this stage 
of life in long curls. With our sister Harriet we 
had much indoor delight in the attic, which here, as 
afterwards in Boston, and until we grew much older, 
served as our common play-room. We would mimic 
grown people, dress up in the cast-off clothes of our 
parents, play school-keeping, housekeeping, and store- 
keeping, much the same as other children do, and act 
out scenes of the many fairy books we had absorbed 
and of ' Pilgrim's Progress,' particularly in the fight 
of Christian and Apollyon. When approaching 
seven, I began to play with other boys ; and several 
of the leading residents of Lowell seem to have drawn 
me in, at one time or another, to visit specially their 
own children and stop to tea ; on one of which latter 
occasions the hostess read aloud ' Lord Ullin's 
Daughter,' a poem over which I almost sobbed. 

" We cliildren took especial delight in those bright 
Sunday evenings of the summer season, when father 
would take us out on a walk, often bringing up at 
some fine mansion in Belvidere, a suburb of the city, 
where he would stop for a conversation on the piazza 
while we made the bashful acquaintance of other 
children. On very rare occasions, under mother's 
direction, we entertained other children ourselves ; as 
where on one of our birthdays we made up a little 



198 BIOGRAPHY. 

picnic to a neighboring hill, and Harrison silk badges, 
commemorative of the Whig President's death, of 
which there were a number about the house, were 
adapted for a decoration quite unfunereal. I seem 
to have been launched early into political knowledge , 
for when about six 1 received for my Christmas 
present a gayly painted sled upon which was a well- 
mounted engraving of all the Presidents of the United 
States from Washington to Polk, so that I got toler- 
ably familiar with their names and faces as I coasted 
in their company on many a cold winter's day. Of 
exhibitions that I remember while in Lowell, ' Bunker 
Hill,' with its miniature soldiers and conflagration, 
deserves a special mention ; and I remember a moder- 
ate-sized audience room, where was seen General 
Tom Thumb, with whom 1 was measured as we put 
backs together standing on a table. Theatricals and 
the footlights, which I so much enjoyed later in 
Boston, I was not yet lit to appreciate ; but some of 
the bigger boys on Tyler Street admitted me as a 
spectator to their own performances one week when 
the stage fever was epidemic among our youth. A 
mask through which a pretended tooth might be 
pulled was the source of untiring entertainment at 
one of these exhibitions; while at another, which I 
attended by night in a cellar dimly lighted by candles, 
duels with wooden swords dealt infinite death, and 
one of the boys — ' Stuttering Sam, ' as we called 
him — ran from the right wing with drawn weapon 
in hand, shouting: 'W-h-hat made you kill my 
brother for? St-t-and back there, st-t-and back.' 
Demure spectator that I was, these older fellows 
little knew my young talent for mimicry, or the sense 
of humor which has predestined them for print. 

" The first school which I regularly attended was 



BIOGRAPHY. 199 

kept by Miss Whittemore, an elderly family acquaint- 
ance who came from West Cambridge and lived with 
us during the brief time that she remained in Lowell. 
She understood well the art of teaching, and had a 
good number of boys and girls, some of whom had 
even reached their teens. The school, situated in a 
lane which made a good ten minutes' walk from 
home, was a detached building, provided with long 
desks and benches after the old fashion, which were 
painted green and ornamented with putty to hide the 
marks of earlier defacement by the jack-knife. I 
should judge that this was some deserted district 
school hired for private occasion. The teacher sat 
by a stove, behind which we would gather in turn 
on cold winter days to get a supply of animal heat 
sufficient to carry back to our seats. A large open 
lot in the rear of our schoolhouse made an ample 
playground for recess, especially when a pile of 
lumber upon it gave us something to climb upon and 
explore, or when in some large cart belonging to the 
mill just beyond we could sit close and eat a water- 
melon which the oldest boy divided among us. In 
my school life and lessons I progressed tolerably well 
for so juvenile a specimen ; and in reading, spelling, 
grammar, and writing I must have proved quite pro- 
ficient-, for I read whatever I could lay hold of in 
school or out, as I long continued to do, and knew 
the contents of the ' school readers ' almost by heart. 
A pathetic poem or bit of prose roused my emotions 
deeply, and I seem to have had some unusual gift of 
entering into the feelings of others and interpreting 
them. An imaginative passage in our little reading- 
book, which I still recall, stirred me so as I read it 
aloud one afternoon in my turn while we sat in class, 
that I made a visible impression upon the school ; but 



200 BIOGRAPHY. 

the boy who followed me started off with such 
emulous exaggeration upon the next and tamer para- 
graph, that the whole class burst into a laugh, for the 
anti-climax was too much for them. 

" After Miss Whittemore gave up teaching, and for 
about a year before we moved from Lowell, I attended 
the public grammar school, of which a Mr. Balch 
was head master. Children older for the most part 
than myself occupied the main hall, the girls ranging 
on one side of the centre aisle, the boys on the other; 
and there were side-rooms for special recitations of 
the several classes of each sex. Here I became pain- 
fully aware of the flogging abuse which in those days 
made so prominent a part of public-school discipline; 
and though never chastised personally at school in 
my life, I was tortured in soul, here and under one 
particular usher afterwards in a Boston school, by 
the pain and indignities Avhich I saw inflicted con- 
tinually upon other male companions, often, as it 
seemed to me wantonly, and for such trivial offences 
as an imperfect lesson. Certain boys were called 
forward day after day to writhe and distort their 
faces upon the platform before their assembled fellows 
of both sexes, as a regular interlude of instruction, 
until I would feel towards them as though they were 
education's martyrs. Young children must have 
taken in the satire of all this, for whenever they 
played school together, they did little more than 
whip each other round. But Mr. Balch, who had an 
agreeable way with most of us, and 1 dare say a 
kindly heart, gave a comical air to his castigation; 
for he would point to his young victim, stigmatizing 
him as ' thou lazy, loafing, idle boy, ' and calling 
him up, make him take hold of his toes before the 
dread cane was laid on from behind. I must have 



/^ 



BIOGRAPHY. 201 

impressed this master by my proficiency for a boy of 
six, for upon my entrance he placed me among big 
boys in one of the higlier classes, where I readily 
held my own. On Saturday afternoons in winter 
the Lowell ' Paddies ' and ' Yankees ' used to have 
snow-ball battles, one faction chasing another through 
the street; and in one of these encounters I handed 
over some well-iced missiles of my own preparation 
as a party of school-boys charged past my front 
gate. ' Who is that ? ' asked one of another as they 
ran by me to the fray. ' Oh ! that 's the little cuss 
in the third class ! ' replied the other. Going into 
the house I asked what ' cuss ' meant, and was told 
that it stood for ' customer. ' 

"Our religious education in the family was well 
heeded by my good mother. At her knee we prayed 
and learned and listened to the Bible; and a little 
book ' Line upon Line, ' one of a well-known series 
which tells the Scripture story for children, imparted 
such delight from her reading, that to this day the 
patriarchs of Genesis, Joseph and his brethren, and 
the conduct of the Israelites from Eg3^t to the 
promised land, have an unwonted hold upon my 
religious feelings. Mother watched the growth of 
our young natures, and in her solicitude to make us 
good tried various experiments from time to time, 
such as recording our Christian progress through 
the week, which record she would read aloud on 
Saturday night, or making a little weekly allowance 
on that day conditional upon good behavior. To 
her unerring sense of justice and proper discipline — • 
for father tended a little to indulgence — and Avithal 
to her gentle prudence, her children owe more than 
they can ever express. On Sundays we went to 
church, or to Sunday-school at least, and enjoyed 



202 BIOGRAPHY, 

doing so. Dr. Edson, our pastor, among other 
gifts, had that of remembering names and faces, 
like tlie great Henry Clay, to whom he bore some 
personal resemblance; and living so many years in 
Lowell, as he did, it used to be said of him that he 
knew every man, woman, and child in the city, and 
kept the trace of each individual's career in life. 
In the rear of our stone St. Anne's Church were two 
Sunday-school buildings of plain wood. To the 
smaller one we were consigned until well grounded 
in the church catechism, after which we were pro- 
moted to the larger one. This promotion I gained 
in good time, with others of our little class, one of 
whom, now rector of one of the most influential 
churches in New York City, and famed throughout 
the land, became, as chance directed long after, a 
college classmate and dear personal friend. Our 
teacher herself accompanied us into the large Sunday- 
school, rather than be separated from such pupils. 
Here father was superintendent, and in the smaller 
Sunday-school, at one time while the over-crowded 
church was being enlarged, he assembled many of 
the younger folk of the parish for morning prayer, 
conducted by himself each Sunday, and read to us 
some suitable tale in place of a sermon. 

" I showed early a fondness for music, and through 
life until my deafness became too positive an impedi- 
ment, I would gather tunes and strains quickly by 
the ear, Avhich mingled with my visible impressions 
of events and served easily to recall them. My 
brothers and sisters were also full of music, — a natu- 
ral gift inherited perhaps from grandfather, though 
father played the flute and mother sang simple airs 
in the earlier years of our childhood. Sometimes 



BIOGRAPHY. 203 

when at a neighbor's house, in these years, they 
would put me forward to sing one of the Whig 
campaign songs with which I was familiar. Of 
church tunes, too, of psalmody and church organs, I 
took early cognizance, not to add of churches them- 
selves of various denominations, of their sextons and 
their bells. So fond was I, while a boy under ten, 
of seeing a bell swing in the belfry of mill or meet- 
ing-house, throwing out its clear tones and then 
pausing inverted on the wheel, that I would climb 
up into an attic window to watch some of these 
monitors performing their functions together at the 
appointed hour; and I remember that on the Fourth 
of July which followed our removal to Boston, I 
pulled by a string an old dinner bell which I had 
hung in an upper window of our house, at the hours 
of sunrise, noon, and sunset, agreeably to the pub- 
lished civic programme of the day ; in blended unison, 
so far as might be, with the metallic friend whose 
motions beckoned from a church steeple visible not 
far distant. With these musical fancies to cherish, 
I wandered one afternoon while very young into the 
basement of a Baptist church in Lowell, where a 
singing-school was in progress; and being well 
received, I readily learned the catch ' Scotland's 
burning,' as the trifle appropriate to the calendar. 
My good parents, appreciating this love of music, 
allowed me presently to attend for a term the best 
singing-school in the city; and there I picked up 
some excellent tunes adapted from such masters as 
Bellini, Weber, and De Beriot, which have stayed 
by me all my hfe. One of them I afterwards heard 
played by a brass band which came one night to our 
house for a serenade after the November elections. 
"While we lived in Lowell father took his first 



204 BIOGRAPHY. 

and only trip abroad, remaining several months in 
and about Great Britain, and describing his sights 
and impressions in a series of editorial letters for his 
newspaper. During his absence mother once jour- 
neyed with us children to Boston, where our daguer- 
reotypes were taken in a group for the benefit of 
Scotch relatives who still preserve them. This 
day's visit gave me my earliest recollections of the 
more solid and sombre brick city which was to 
become our domicile a year or two later. Another 
trip tliither was made on my express account, and 
merged into a three months' stay at West Cambridge 
with my grandparents. I had passed too much time, 
it appears, in stooping over my books, and malforma- 
tion of the chest was threatened; but the Boston 
physician who was consulted prescribed a simple 
regimen which resulted in an entire cure. Grand- 
mother gave me a shower-bath every morning, and 
administered regular doses of a bitter sarsaparilla, 
beyond which I had simply to idle about in the open 
air, enjoying myself as I might, and let all reading 
and study alone. The three months passed thus 
happily in the society of the two old people, whose 
thoughtful kindness was unfailing. Framed engrav- 
ings hung on their walls of *" Waverley, ' ' Fergus 
Maclvor,' and *■ Sir Walter Scott, Bart.,' all of which 
they patiently explained to me. I would gather 
burrs (not flowers) on a neighboring bank, in com- 
pany with another boy, and then pretend to peddle 
them about; and I paid constant visits in person to 
the factories, where I became acquainted with every 
workman, young or old, and learned the whole pro- 
cess of printing satinets and calicoes, and the minutise 
of the machinery, from the cool water-wheel where 
motive power began to the heated calender and the 



BIOGRAPHY. 205 

brushing machine which gave to the figured clotli its 
final finish. A brown-paper liat was made for me, 
such as the operatives wore. I would rig up con- 
trivances of my own on the premises so as to imagine 
myself hard at accompanying work; and once or 
twice the good Scotchman in charge of the printing- 
cylinder admitted me to the supreme dignity of \\m\- 
ing the lever that started or stopped its copper plunge 
through the dye-trongh. Grandfather took me with 
him on various rides which I greatly enjoyed. 
Together he and I went one evening to old Cambridge 
to see a circus, the fii\st I ever witnessed; and per- 
haps the long drive tired me out, for the illuminated 
tent, the rising benches filled with spectators who 
drank lemonade, the spangled riders, the chalky- 
faced clown, the horses that pranced about the ring 
to the music of a brass band and of cracking whips, 
left in my little brain but a confused impression. 

" I said and did some droll things about the house 
on this visit, which my mirthful grandmother never 
ceased to talk about in the family. One evening- 
some elderly neighbors called, one of whom turned 
to me, as callers will do when they want to compli- 
ment their host by taking notice of his young folk, 
and asked me what 1 meant to do M'hen I grew up. 
Taking the question in all seriousness, and having 
in memory a passage from one of my books, I at 
once replied that I didn't know whether I should be 
' a machine-printer or a minister of the gospel. ' This 
amused the whole room, and the story got repeated. 
Another day, after returning from a pleasant fore- 
noon's ride to Woburn with grandfather, in the 
course of which I had found many objects to notice 
and ask about, one of them being a saw-mill, I pro- 
ceeded to the covered side porch which I had deco- 



20e BIOGRAPHY. 

rated with my sign as a ' slate-drawing room,' and 
made a picture of a liorse and chaise on my slate 
while dinner was preparing. Grandfather and I 
were sketched as occupants of the carriage, while 
the saw-mill rose from the background. After flour- 
ishing with the pencil as children will do, and giving 
to horse and chaise some peculiarly elegant trappings, 
it occurred to me to add, as a title for so artistic a 
production, ' Rich people going to Woburn ; ' and 
with the picture thus inscribed, I showed it at dinner 
to my grandparents. The laugh with which they 
greeted it I had not looked for; but this tale, too, 
they sent upon the family rounds; and upon the 
whole, fond as they evidently were of me, I tliink 
they gained and gave the impression that their fii'st 
grandson was rather an old head. 

"During this three months' visit, which, by the 
way, made quite a distinct epoch of my early child- 
hood, a little sister was born in Lowell, who died 
within a few weeks. Of both her birth and her 
death I was apprised at West Cambridge by my 
grandparents, and she was the only member of my 
father's immediate family whom I never saw nor 
knew; for a kind Providence spared all the rest of 
us, whether born already or later, for many years of 
united sympathy and haj^piness. " 



IV. 

1847-1855. 

Colonel Schouler's marked success with the 
"Lowell Courier," and his increasing renown as a 
legislator and political speaker and manager, attracted 



BIOGRAPHY. 207 

by 1847 the attention of Daniel Webster, whose 
personal acquaintance he had already made, and of 
other Massachusetts leaders in the great national 
party whose fortunes he served. William Hayden 
now retiring from the chief editorship of the " Boston 
Atlas," the recognized organ at this time of the intel- 
lect, culture, wealth, and power of the New England 
Whigs, Schouler was induced to become the con- 
ductor and a co-proprietor of the paper in his place. 
He sold out the "Lowell Courier" accordingly, and 
moved to Boston in the spring of 1847 to enter upon 
his wider vocation as a journalist. 

In after years William Schouler spoke often of 
the "Lowell Courier" as his "first love." It had 
been his own newspaper as well as his earliest, and 
he had so widened its influence and circulation as to 
leave it a handsome property. He carried the same 
ambition into the "Atlas," and showed talents and 
energy worthy of a successor in the enterprise which 
had made Richard Haughton and William Hayden 
so illustrious. American journalism in that day did 
not, as it does now, depend greatly upon costly 
competition in the gathering of news; but editorial 
leaders from day to day, which discussed the imme- 
diate political situation to influence voters, were the 
main reliance of the daily press for power and for- 
tune; and a continual sparring was withal kept up 
in the editorial columns with journals of the opposi- 
tion, so that editors themselves maintained a certain 
personality before their readers which has long since 
passed away. Cordial generosity, fairness, and kind- 
liness of heart had been Schouler's strong character- 
istics in conducting his Lowell paper ; upon which he 
had employed other pens in subordination to his own 
good temper, restraining the bitter and slashing style 



208 BIOGRAPHY. 

of the talented assistant who, unlike himself, was 
wanting in reverence and fixed opinions. That same 
good temper and high honor shone from all that he 
ever afterwards wrote, or spoke, or did, as editor or 
statesman. " His editorial bearing, " says the Demo- 
cratic journalist of Boston with whom he now sparred 
most, himself a man of the utmost urbanity and good 
feeling, "was ever marked by the discreetness that 
includes consideration of others, by gentleness as 
well as a masculine courage and strong self-assertion, 
and by those indescribable courtesies and amenities 
which are the offspring and evidence of a kind and 
generous heart. In his professional contests on 
political questions with tliis journal, he excited no 
feelings but those of respect for his ability, of esteem 
for his integrity of opinion, and of affectionate regard 
for his rare qualities of amiability and genuine 
goodness." 

For a while all went smoothly and happily with 
the " Boston Atlas " under the new direction. 
Schouler's associates were all loyal, true, men of 
unblemished honor, capable of appreciating and of 
co-operating with him. An editorial correspondence 
from Washington was kept up by one or another of 
the two nominal proprietors while Congress remained 
in session ; and Colonel Schouler, in the course of a 
considerable sojourn at the national capital now and 
later, profited by a wide personal acquaintance with 
our most eminent national statesmen of the period, 
many of whom he has described in his " Personal and 
Political Recollections." This day of the "Atlas" 
was the day in Massachusetts of Webster and 
Ashmun, of Edward Everett, Abbott Lawrence, and 
Robert C. Winthrop, and abounded in puljlic men of 
the most brilliant and powerful qualities. Schouler 



BIOGRAPHY. 209 

was admitted to their secret councils, and shared the 
responsibility of their political plans. One of the 
most touching obituary notices of Daniel Webster, 
in 1852, was from his pen, and recalled personal 
scenes at Marshfield when Webster was in his 
grandest mood of elevated thought. The influence 
of the " Boston Atlas " soon culminated, as did that 
of the Whig party, in the election and succession of 
Zachary Taylor to the Presidency; and by 1850 this 
newspaper was recognized and pronounced the lead- 
ing Whig paper in New England, and that upon 
whose support Daniel Webster chiefly relied. But 
when Webster made that year his famous 7th of 
March speech, in which he abandoned the strong 
ground against slavery extension which the soundest 
Massachusetts Whigs, and Schouler among them, 
had occupied, and supported the compromise pallia- 
tives proposed by Henry Clay, the " Atlas " denounced 
the speech and refused to follow him. Webster had 
long been political dictator to the leading Whigs of 
Boston, and this rebellious protest of an imported 
editor was a daring and dangerous act of independ- 
ence, though the administration office-holders in that 
city and the popular conscience of Massachusetts 
which Schouler well understood, sustained the news- 
paper. President Taylor's sudden death, soon after, 
which upset the best Whig calculations, the accession 
of Vice-President Fillmore with Webster as premier in 
his cabinet, and the actual passage of the compromise 
measures against those wiser plans which Taylor 
and Seward had formulated, brought serious embar- 
rassments upon the " Atlas ; " taking away the pecu- 
niary support of many who had been Schouler's 
warmest political friends, and seriously and, as it 
proved, fatally, in the inevitable final rupture of the 

14 



210 BIOGRAPHY. 

great Whig party, injuring the prosperity of his 
newspaper. For editors in those days rose or fell by 
party politics. Schouler had Massachusetts and the 
mass of northern Whigs on his side, as the Presi- 
dential nomination of Scott showed, whom the 
" Atlas " supported, and the Presidential vote of the 
State in the fall of 1852; but Webster's disappointed 
ambition and death during the canvass were reflected 
in the Democratic vote of Boston, and the "stop my 
paper," and "stop my advertisement" of Boston 
merchants and financiers which now followed, com- 
pelled the independent editor to sell out from the 
concern and retire to some distant State. Upon the 
advice of Horace Greeley and others he made Ohio 
and the West his new home ; purchasing an interest 
in the staid and respectable "Cincinnati Gazette," 
of which he became the responsible editor. He left 
Boston and New England in the fall of 1853, and in 
the spring of 1851 removed his whole family — per- 
manently, as he believed — to the Buckeye State, 
with whose flourishing emporium he had become 
already identified as a journalist since the previous 
November. 

But Schouler's popularity in Boston had been 
after all abundant; and many who shared his own 
clear insight into the future of American politics 
loved him the more for having so courageously 
opposed that grand but fleeting compromise of 1850. 
Before he wrote his leader in the "Atlas," in 
November, 1852, upon the "Waterloo defeat of the 
Whig party," he had been repeatedly chosen as a 
Boston representative to the legislature, as before he 
had been from Lowell. As an offset to his non-elec- 
tion, this year, the Whig House of Representatives 
of the Massachusetts Legislature of 1853 chose him 



BIOGRAPHY. 211 

Clerk by way of compliment ; and this same year, a 
few months before he moved to Ohio, he served as a 
member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Conven- 
tion of 1853, in whose proceedings he proved himself 
a progressive but judicious advocate, midway between 
the strong opposing forces, and one of the best 
tacticians on the floor. 

A growing disrelish for that sycophantic relation 
which custom in those days assigned to political 
editors may be traced in the following passage of 
Schouler's speech in the Convention from which we 
have already quoted : ^ " A great deal has been said 
about the licentiousness of the public press. Now, 
sir, I happen to have had a great deal to do with the 
public press, and I must say that the most licentious 
part of my experience connected with it has been 
the defence of men in high stations." This sally 
provoked great laughter and merriment, as he had 
meant it to do ; but there was a touch of secret sad- 
ness in the confession. His connection with the 
press was destined to last several years longer, in 
one precarious sense or another; but he never again 
felt such enthusiasm for the editor's vocation as he 
had felt before. 

" During the seven years that we lived in Boston 
before moving to Cincinnati," writes our present 
author, "we occupied three different houses in suc- 
cession. First we went to Harrison Avenue, at that 
time a fashionable street for residences; next to an 
ample old house on Pearl Street, just at the foot of 
Fort Hill, with attractive private grounds close by, 
and mercantile business creeping towards us; and 
last to a lovely cottage on the beach at Jeffries' 

1 1 Mass. Debates 639; supra, p. 189. 



212 BIOGRAPHY. 

Point, East Boston, which commanded a full pros- 
pect of the harbor, and wliere I passed the three 
haj)piest years of a very happy childhood. Another 
brother and sister by this time completed the family 
circle, — John, who was born in Lowell, November 
30, 1846; and Fanny, born in East Boston, January 
19, 1852. A closer equality in age had bound the 
three eldest of us more closely together in childhood's 
companionship; but we were all affectionate." 

James was placed in the Brimmer School when 
the family first moved to Boston; but when the 
Quincy School district was set off, a few months later, 
he became one of the original pupils of this new 
institution. Under its first head master, John D. 
Philbrick, the Quincy Scliool furnished Boston's 
grand model of public instruction; and the con- 
spicuous success of that illustrious educator in organ- 
izing and directing so large a body of pupils led 
to his later promotion to school superintendence. 
James graduated from the Quincy School in 1851, 
first on its list of Franklin medal scholars ; and then 
entering the Boston Latin School, he remained there 
long enough to become well grounded in the Latin 
language and grammar and insensibly to pave the 
way to a college education. But James at that time 
had no idea of entering college ; and with a sturdy 
idea of earning his own livelihood, he prevailed upon 
his parents, when about thirteen, to let him go into 
a bookstore. A few weeks, however, of early rising 
and hard drudgery convinced him that a little more 
school was preferable, and, sent this time to Chauncy 
Hall, a private school, he zealously pursued once 
more his other studies, letting classics alone, until 
the family removal West in 1854. 

As a Boston school-boy the youthful James showed 



BIOGRAPHY. 213 

a certain conspicuousness of his own which strongly 
attracted the affection of his teacliers, at the same 
time that his modesty and unobtrusive disposition 
made him less of a leader among school companions, 
less, perhaps, of a recognized hero, than a boy of his 
mental attainments is apt to be. Children cannot 
analyze a subtle character, but trust to surface appear- 
ances. Something of domestic seclusion clung to 
him. If ambitious, it was not along the lines which 
other boys most sought for distinction; and the 
impression he chiefly gave to his mates was that of 
a genial and gentle fellow who got on well and made 
friends, but left others of more daring self-assertion 
to lead. His home life wove about him a web 
almost impenetrable to others ; nor had he any great 
taste for the usual boyish sports, though he bore his 
moderate part in base-ball, swimming, coasting, skat- 
ing, and the like athletics of the day. His strong 
physical endurance as he grew older owed nothing 
in fact to athletic training; but sound health and 
morals, a cheerful temper, and simple out-of-doors 
life explain the whole of it. While living at East 
Boston he walked about five miles each way to 
school and back, in all weathers, and made no merit 
of it. 

Theatre-going, concerts, and most of all the 
Museum fairy spectacles and the Ravel family (to 
all of which performances editors had free passes) 
were now his great delight in holiday recreation ; and 
with spools and shifting books for his actors and 
scenery he would reproduce what he had witnessed 
by the hour together before his nearest sister and 
brother, whose tastes were similar; going so far as 
to piu'chase play-books and make paper heads and 
costumes for his mimic stage. Once, with other boys, 



214 BIOGRAPHY. 

he got up a very tolerable afternoon performance of 
"Box and Cox." His love of imaginative books and 
reading was all the while incessant. From fairy- 
books and Jacob Abbott, he became an eager de- 
vourer of poetry and fiction, and in the winter nights 
he would read aloud the latest number of Dickens' 
new novel, as the family gathered about the astral 
lamp. Shakespeare, the Waverley Novels, Macaulay's 
History, and other treasures of his father's good 
library he ransacked freely; and upon his father's 
advice he began in 1853, though with less spontaneous 
ardor, to dip into the biographies of American states- 
men, such as John Jay, Wirt, and Aaron Burr, for 
the last of whom he conceived somewhat of a 
romantic fascination until time taught him a better 
estimate. That "vast vacuity," of which Milton 
speaks, he was constantly filling up with erudition, 
worthy or worthless, which enriched his English 
composition. 

At school, from all that we can gather, James 
ranked high, not by reason of any intellectual bril- 
liancy such as burns out its lamp, but because of a 
strong healthy all-round development; and his rank 
was aided by exemplary conduct and a punctual 
clock-work regularity at his tasks. It was for this 
manifestation of high marks throughout that his first 
teacher at the Quincy School, one afternoon, when 
the marks were read out, bade him take his cap and 
books and follow him to the highest room, where he 
was at once installed, skipping the sub-master in 
the middle of a term, — a public-school promotion 
quite out of course. The same general thoroughness 
ranked him first when he graduated; and his prin- 
cipal, John D. Philbrick, long alluded in his educa- 
tional lectures to this young boy as one who during 



BIOGRAPHY. 215 

four years was not absent or tardy but once, when 
accident excused him. In the mastery of good 
English at all points James's studies aj)peared best; 
his proficiency being most marked in reading, spell- 
ing, grammar, and parsing, the choice of words and 
the construction of sentences. Less for thought, 
perhaps, than for expression, at so early an age, his 
English compositions passed for models in his class ; 
fiction, poetry, the discussion of social topics, and 
historical description furnished the substance of 
them; and one upon "Napoleon Bonaparte," written 
at the age of ten, is a good example at hand of his 
early skill in gathering facts and narrating them. 
But his literary aptness is still better illustrated by 
a little newspaper, which he used to write out on 
double-columned foolscap, and issue (for the home 
circle exclusively) as "editor and publisher," when 
only eleven years old, styling it the " Family Visitor 
and Home Journal." He decorated it with a head- 
line and the motto " Nil desperandum " (which he 
had picked up long before studying Latin), and a 
pen-and-ink picture of the Pearl Street resideiice 
which constituted his "office." Of this paper, which 
he carried on in 1850, by way of home recreation, 
issuing it each week or fortnight, several numbers 
were preserved by his mother; and the specimen now 
before us contains, in addition to school items, the 
seventh chapter of a temperance tale, "It is all for 
the Best," an instalment of "Alfred the Great " under 
"Lives of Celebrated Men," and a spirited poem 
"New England," — productions all original and 
written out in the neatest chirography possible, with- 
out a single inaccuracy in spelling or grammar. 

In one other respect, certainly, James's excellence 
was acknowledged by his schoolmates wherever he 



216 BIOGRAPHY. 

went; and this same excellence procured for him a 
second and then a first Boylston prize when he was 
at college. This was in declamation, — a talent which 
first shone out at the Quincy School. At a Boston 
temperance convention three or four choice boys from 
the public schools were selected to deliver little 
speeches arranged for them ; and one of these was our 
present author. "My dehut on a public platform," 
he writes, " was at the Tremont Temple, when ten 
years old, and I repeated my harangue from a stand 
on Boston Common the next day. My chief sensa- 
tion, I remember, was that of seeing my name in 
print for the first time upon the programmes distrib- 
uted in the hall." At all the school exhibitions he 
attended from that day forward his part was a promi- 
nent one ; and while at the Latin School, where there 
was much excellent speaking under Dr. Gardner's 
direction, he represented his class regularly on the 
public Saturdays. Though sometimes selecting dra- 
matic poems like "Marmion," his preference was for 
prose extracts from Webster, Clay, Wirt, Corwin, 
and some of the Irish statesmen, which he memorized 
extensively. "A handsome face and figure, A\ith 
rosy cheeks, typical of health," says one who remem- 
bers him, " set off his oratory, which was impressively 
earnest and was aided by a flexible and melodious 
voice and appropriate gestures. He threw himself 
into whatever he had to deliver." The richness of 
his musical delivery as a scliool-boy is thus recalled 
by one who heard him recite Wirt's description of 
the Blennerhassett island at a Latin school exhibi- 
tion. Capable himself of strong feeling, and deeply 
stirred in the soul by eloquent passages, the incessant 
search which he used to make for them, through 
prose and poetry, from early youth to manhood, did 



BIOGRAPHY. 217 

much to widen his range of thought and confirm his 
mastery of English expression. 

At the age of fourteen, moreover, our author 
in a marked instance showed himself strongly 
capahle of continuous mental labor during the hours 
which most school-boys assign to play and sport. 
While his father was Clerk of the Massachusetts 
House in 1853 the legislature made an appropriation 
for copying out some of the old journals of the last 
century for better preservation. One of these jour- 
nals — that for 1784 — William Schouler assigned 
experimentally to his eldest son, who, after a few 
boyish lapses, buckled himself down to the task and 
finished it in the course of a few months; aiding his 
work, as he was wont to do in later years, by closely 
estimating the daily progress needful to reach the 
goal by a given time, and then keeping well up to 
the estimate. A large folio volume of several hun- 
dred manuscript pages, substantially bound, and 
written in a clear school-boy hand with a steel pen, 
may still be seen at the State Library of Massachu- 
setts as a monument of one's manual toil out of 
school hours, at the age of fourteen. For this 
achievement his father praised him as possessing 
already " a busy purpose, a desire to succeed, and an 
industrial habit." 

James's musical taste and talent progressed in 
these school years. He would improvise, would play 
on the piano whatever he heard elsewhere, catching a 
melody quickly, and applying chords with an almost 
intuitive perception of thorough bass. At the age 
of eleven he began taking piano lessons, with an 
ultimate reference to the organ; and his favorite 
teacher was a Mr. Leavens, the organist at St. Paul's 
Church, Boston, and a man of consummate taste in 



218 BIOGRAPHY. 

all that pertained to church music. The two grew 
greatly attached to one another, though in age so 
unequal, and formed a friendship which lasted for 
many years. When the hour's instruction was over, 
the teacher would himself play from the oratorios, or 
improvise, compare tunes, and discourse with his 
pupil, until the clock showed that he must hasten out- 
of-doors for some other engagement; and thus did 
the boy gain far more in breadth of musical culture 
than the mere lesson imparted. He exploited all 
new collections of sacred music, searching every book 
of church tunes he could find, and buying a number 
for himself; and before he entered college he had 
written out with his own hand a choice collection of 
a hundred tunes, some of which were of his own 
arrangement. This manuscript book, still extant, 
he often used while conducting a choir. 

That interest in church and Sunday-school which 
had been inculcated while at Lowell was projected 
into his whole subsequent life. A struggling Epis- 
copal church at East Boston, which was founded by 
Rev. Nathaniel G. Allen, who years later married 
our author's elder sister, appealed strongly to his 
sympathies. The parish record left by Mr. Allen 
records "Master James Schouler" among the bene- 
factors, in raising thirty-five dollars for the increase of 
the Sunday-school library; a task of his own concep- 
tion, which involved a visit to Lowell, where, under 
the kindly patronage of his old pastor, Dr. Edson, he 
made a house-to-house canvass for the money, with 
two other boys as a local committee. He chose the 
new books, bought them with the money raised, 
numbered and catalogued them. Perhaps, however, 
a more striking instance of his youthful zeal was 
shown at the same church under Mr. Allen's sue- 



BIOGRAPHY. 219 

cesser. A young woman who had served as organist 
married and moved away; and James, who by this 
time had presided occasionally at the instrument, was 
urged to take her place. He consented for the 
rector's temporary convenience, but at once found 
himself with the entire musical direction devolved 
upon him, and found no exemption until the family 
removed from East Boston a year later. "I am 
sometimes amazed," writes our author, "when I 
recall the perfect confidence with which, a boy of 
fourteen, I handled that little organ and drilled 
weekly a choir of half a dozen adults, selecting all 
the Sunday music without consultation. At our 
first rehearsal a man about four times my age under- 
took to control the choice of tunes, and finding me 
unyielding, left the room; after which no more loyal 
or harmonious a set of men and women ever stood up 
to sing before a congregation, so long as I remained 
at m}^ post." All who thus aided the music, and 
our young organist included, did so from good-will 
and without recompense. 

The Schoulers, as we have said, were strongly 
united as a household, children and parents, and 
were affectionate towards one another; but between, 
father and eldest son there seems to have been a 
bond of peculiar tenderness. Each preserved con- 
stantly the earliest letters received from the other, — 
forerunners of a correspondence which was later to 
reveal much for mutual sympathy and counsel. The 
first filial letter that James ever wrote bears date 
December 14, 1851, while his father was in Washing- 
ton; and the latter's reply, three days later, made 
mention that Senator Seward, at whose desk he was 
writing, had read the letter through. " He said that 



220 BIOGRAPHY. 

it was written very well, indeed, and that I should 
feel very proud of you, and he asked your age, which 
I told him." While at Cincinnati, in September, 
1853, preparing to remove his family thither, the 
father next wrote a long letter to his son James, 
recalling in a pathetic strain his own early struggles 
and the blessing a good mother had been to him, and 
enjoining upon the son a like ajDpreciation on his 
part, and the cultivation of industrious and self- 
improving habits ; since he, too, must make his own 
way in life. The son, responding hurriedly from 
school in recess-time, made laconic answer to all this 
good advice : " I have your letter to me in my pocket, 
and I would briefly say that I hope I shall never dis- 
grace the name I bear." 

James had much wished that the family journey 
to Cincinnati should give a chance to see New York 
City and the picturesque Hudson. This wish the 
father gratified. Their tarry at the Astor House, in 
the great metropolis, in March, 1854, with the novel 
sight of horse-cars running from City Hall opposite, 
and a World's Fair to visit, was full of delight, but 
a blinding snow-storm made the steamboat trip to 
Albany a disappointment. Arrived at their new 
Ohio home soon after, the child's young mind 
received new impressions calculated to broaden his 
conception of American life: he learned to love 
hill-crowned Cincinnati by the yellow river for tlie 
short time he was to remain connected with it; but 
he pined much for New England, and was homesick 
for old acquaintances left behind. 

In the course of this first summer of 1854 at the 
west, James's little sister had to be taken to Boston 
by the mother for medical treatment and a change of 
scene; he went in charge of the party. Except for 



BIOGRAPHY. 221 

this episode, the boy's whole bent was now upon his 
studies. Sent for the first few months to a private 
school of half a dozen boys, taught by a Methodist 
clergyman who had left the pulpit, — a man of much 
talent and erudition, but as shy and shambling as 
Dominie Sampson, — he developed at once a preco- 
cious intimacy with his teacher; and, drawing out 
his own programme of studies preparatory to mercan- 
tile life, which embraced French and German but no 
^classics, he pursued it in good earnest. But now 
came up the parental project of sending James to 
college, — a turn to life wholly unexpected, and yet, 
when fairly realized, most pleasing to him. It seems 
to have originated in the idea of others that a youth 
so exemplary in morals would grow into a clergy^ 
man ; but when put to the test his ambition in life 
proved a secular one. Kenyon College at Gambler 
was first fixed upon; and beginning in the autumn 
at Mr. Brooks's famous school, where the young 
scions of Cincinnati's best families came together, 
James turned back to his classical studies, which for 
more than two years had been laid aside, and resolved 
that this first year of genuine college preparation 
should be his last. 

The grammar drill of the Boston Latin School, 
where rules and Latin words were memorized, gave 
him an obvious advantage in attacking Ctesar, Cicero, 
and Virgil ; and Greek grammar and Greek authors 
he also tackled for the first time with assiduity; in 
English studies ranking already with the foremost in 
the school. Nominally in the third class when he 
began, James came quickly alongside of the second 
and then the first. Mr. Brooks used to say of him 
afterwards, that he accomplished in one year what 
took most other boys three years, which was literally 



222 BIOGRAPHY. 

true. Meanwhile Trinity College at Hartford had 
become the parental choice for him; and with the 
added incentive of returning east, his determination 
to be fitted in twelve months grew stronger. But 
in the early summer of 1855, a leading citizen of 
Cincinnati, who heard James declaim at a school 
exhibition, said to the father : " Harvard is the insti- 
tution for your boy. Don't fail to send him there, 
where I have a son already." The parents heeded 
this advice, which involved a greater advance in 
qualifications than the standard previously in view; 
but, nothing daunted, the son kept on through his 
school vacation and into the hot summer months, 
under his teacher's special coaching, to meet the 
Harvard requirements. His robust health nearly 
gave way under this new and incessant strain ; but 
he persevered, and at length was ready to take the 
long journey to Boston and present himself for the 
second Harvard examination which was to be held at 
the close of August, just before the commencement 
of a new academic year. Leaving home and parents 
for the first prolonged departure of his life, he found 
at dawn upon the dressing-table of his chamber two 
parting tokens which he never ceased to cherish, — a 
long and loving letter from his father, full of sound 
advice; and a plain gold ring inscribed "from 
mother," which he wore upon his finger for many 
years and until a wife's ring displaced it. The early 
omnibus bore him to the train; three days later he 
was in Cambridge ; and on Friday the 31st of August, 
he telegraphed his father, " Entered Harvard without 
any conditions. " 



BIOGRAPHY. 223 

V. 

1855-1859. 

" Until my entrance upon college life at the age of 
sixteen," writes our historian, "no life could have 
been happier or sunnier than mine; no home more 
helpful; no parents kinder or more considerate. For 
a boy not brought up to luxury, it seemed as though 
every childish wish had hitherto been gratified. But 
scarcely had I begun my studies at Harvard when 
the black clouds began to gather, which, chasing one 
after another and discharging, have cost me many a 
sad and sombre day, until I seem to have regained a 
calm and azure horizon in mature life, chiefly by 
learning life's deeper philosophy, and gaining patience 
to endure what Euripides calls, in good classical 
Greek, ills unbearable that nevertheless must be 
borne." 

Colonel Schouler had sunk more capital in the 
" Boston Atlas " than he or his friends could at first 
comprehend. "He has told me with tears in his 
eyes," relates his son, ''that Webster's 7th of March 
speech marked the turning-point in his pecuniary 
fortunes." Nor indeed did that faithful party organ 
long survive the grand Whig procession, for it was 
moribund when he left Boston. He had as usual 
trusted too much to the statements of others, when 
purchasing an interest in the " Cincinnati Gazette : " 
and though a respectable and well established journal, 
he found it encumbered with old debts whose pay- 
ment absorbed all the profits, until in September of this 
year, 1855, a note fell due which he could not meet. 



224 BIOGRAPHY. 

He had borrowed of his father and brothers, but 
others upon whom he had relied now failed him. A 
forced sale of his shares was threatened ; and in gloom 
and distress he wrote to the son just separated from 
him of new projects in life; of moving east or still 
farther west ; of retiring to a farm in disgust ; of com- 
ing to Massachusetts once more if only some news- 
paper could be found for him. This last thought 
was not to be wondered at, for on a recent visit to 
Boston Colonel Schouler had received the present of 
a handsome silver service from "the old folks at 
home ; " and so great a Massachusetts leader of the 
Whigs as Edward Everett wrote him about this time, 
expressing the wish that he were back, for things did 
not go so well in home politics as when he was there. 
The dishonor of mercantile paper was a new and a 
sensitive experience for our editor; "this terrible 
thing of being in debt," writes the father to his son, 
"weighs upon my mind like a mill-stone." Fortu- 
nately, however, he had made a new friend in 
Cincinnati, of his own generous sort, though of 
opposing politics, and this friend now came forward. 
Delinquency was stayed, and things resumed their 
former course. 

But the editors of the " Gazette " did not work 
smoothly together. Though nominally the chief and 
held responsible by the public for all that appeared 
in print, William Schouler could not control his 
financial editor and co-owner; and when the latter 
inserted a leading article, purposely, perhaps, which 
politically attacked Scliouler's new benefactor in 
savage terms, the chief editor, stung to the quick 
by this semblance of jiersonal ingratitude, tendered 
his immediate resignation. A truce was arranged; 
but Colonel Schouler, after a vain winter's journey 



BIOGRAPHY. 225 

to Washington in search of a position from the new 
Congress, whose House was controlled by the com- 
posite elements he had helped bring into power, 
agreed in the spring of 1856 with his two "Gazette " 
associates to buy them out within sixty days or else 
sell out to them and retire. He applied to eastern 
friends, but failed to raise the money; and accord- 
ingly he sold his share to his associates and received 
a small balance in hand over and above the debts he 
now punctiliously discharged. He left the newspaper 
by the middle of April, 1856. 

All of these successive transactions James at col- 
lege followed with his epistolary counsel. "You 
write, my dear son, exceedingly well," wrote the 
father to him; "your letters display a great deal of 
matured sense, and I have profited much by the 
advice they contain." His mother, too, less sanguine 
and variable in temperament, had detailed with 
equal confidence the family troubles, and with clear 
insight from her own point of view sought his advice. 
"I have often thought," relates our author, "while 
reflecting since upon this family episode, that I 
threw away at this time an opportunity in life, not 
then clear to me, which might have led us on to 
the flood of fortune and influence. Except for 
money-making, which Americans rarely lose sight of 
as a consideration, father certainly achieved a later 
career outside of journalism, and so possibly have I. 
But had I chosen to leave college at once and 
joined father, heart and hand, in this Cincinnati 
enterprise, I am confident that, youth though I was, 
we should have raised the money together and made 
that newspaper permanently our own. We had good 
mental qualities to combine in such work, — he with 
his genius for personal acquaintance and popularity, 

15 



226 BIOGRAPHY. 

I with a closer application to details and comparison ; 
and each of us capable of wielding the pen and inter- 
preting events, after his own fashion. Not a sugges- 
tion of the kind came to me then, or it might have 
fructified. In fact, I was rather disposed, at this 
early stage of life, to encourage father's increasing 
disrelish of the press, for journalism in this country 
had not yet asserted its independence in enterprise, 
and editors were still too much the bond-slaves of 
politics and of ambitious statesmen. So I kept on 
at Harvard, economizing as I might. Father sold out 
his interest instead of buying out his associates ; and 
the sagacious financial editor of the ' Gazette ' — well 
known in after years as ' Deacon Richard Smith, 
the truly good ' — gained that full control of the 
newspaper for which, I do not doubt, he had been 
craftily working." 

With the trifling balance received from the sale of 
his interest in the "Gazette," Colonel Schouler now 
entered the commission business in Cincinnati, engag- 
ing a store, and, as he wrote his son, hoping soon to 
be in the "full tide of successful experiment." His 
chosen partner, against whom he was seasonably 
warned as a man of bad reputation in Boston business 
circles, received nearly all of this money, and went 
east to purchase goods for the credulous concern ; but 
neither goods nor cash ever appeared, and the partner 
turned up in a Massachusetts criminal court, a year 
later, under an indictment for forgery. Colonel 
Schouler bore his new anxiety with more equanimity 
than his earlier one ; and, having great influence and 
popularity in Cincinnati, where he had made hosts 
of personal friends, he was sent to the first Presidential 
convention of the Republican party at Philadelphia, 
which nominated Fremont and Dayton, and upon his 



BIOGRAPHY. 227 

return presented tlie resolutions at the large ratifica- 
tion meeting which was held during June in Cincin- 
nati. With renewed enthusiasm for politics he now 
threw himself into the work of organizing by speech 
and pen for the new national cause of free soil. His 
friends had never taken seriously his newspaper vale- 
dictory nor his purpose of mercantile life. He had, 
in fact, been writing leaders constantly for the 
" Gazette " while waiting for his goods to begin busi- 
ness ; and, accepting presently an offer to edit the 
"Ohio State Journal" upon a salary, he moved with 
his family to Columbus, and before August was ab- 
sorbed in editorial pursuits once more. All these 
home changes transpired during the son's first year 
at Harvard; and the reverses of another family to 
whom James had been much attached deepened his 
intimacy thus early with adversity, and made him 
prematurely a counsellor of the distressed. 

Our author remained at Cambridge, persevering in 
his University studies and practising a rigid economy, 
" I cannot divest myself of this sad melancholy when 
I write you," said his father in a letter, "but I do 
not wish it to make you sadj you must keep on as 
you have begun." Remittances from home, how- 
ever, were of small amount, and necessarily preca- 
rious ', nor would he have been able to complete his 
college course at all but for the generous offer of his 
father's eldest brother, who was a man of means, to 
make up any deficiency. James inherited a Scotch 
pride and reticence over all these troubles, and such 
assistance as the University was wont to render to 
students visibly in need would have been intolerable 
to him. In the course of these four years he aided 
his revenue by teaching school one winter, and at 



228 BIOGRAPHY. 

other times by finding Sunday employment as an 
organist. "The money spent on my music," as he 
once wrote his father, ^ was not thro'svn away ; for in 
this one year I shall make more than all my musical 
instruction ever cost you." And thus by hook or 
crook he made his way through college, scrupulous 
of incurring debt, keeping his frugality out of sight, 
and sharing fairly in those general calls upon the 
purse which social companionship made necessary. 

Schouler's classmates agree that during the first 
few months at college he was held somewhat in con- 
tempt, and that his rise in the class, though constant, 
was quite gradual, and due to a better estimate on 
acquaintance of his genuine talent and goodness of 
heart. During the fii'st term of his Freshman year 
he lived at quite a distance from the college buildings 
in a private family. He was one of the youngest 
men in his class ; among classmates there was no one 
who knew him intimately already, though several 
had met him at other schools ; and while he did not 
repel acquaintance, he seemed shy and sought none. 
Besides being oppressed in fact with domestic troubles, 
he had been brought uj) emphatically as a home boy, 
and was thoroughly home -sick and far away from 
those he loved. All this made him sensitive and 
shrinking J and he had furthermore the speedy con- 
sciousness that he was misunderstood. The rumor 
spread that he was "green." Without tact enough 
to turn the laugh upon fellows whom he saw trying 
their tricks, he drew rather into his shell; and 
stories utterly unfounded were told of him, which he 
had no chance to refute until the Junior "mock- 
parts " disclosed them. Fortunately for him it soon 
happened that a table mate began to drop in upon 
him in the afteAioons to study the Greek lesson; 



BIOGRAPHY. 229 

their cordial intercourse grew, and they soon con- 
cluded to take a room together in the college build- 
ings at the beginning of the new term. 

The friendship of these college chums, admirably 
fitted for one another, was mutually helpful through 
their University course, and has since ripened into 
the intimacy of a lifetime. One of the most sociable 
of men, fond of class politics and class societies, and 
possessed thus early of a marked savoir faire among 
callers and companions of all conditions, John H. 
Ricketson bore well the hospitalities of this conjugal 
bachelorhood in the college yard, which after all 
affords the only college life worth living. Classmates 
now came in upon them for study or fun, and Schouler 
found himself in his better element, and better under- 
stood. To the Sophomore " Institute," he was elected 
without opposition ; he joined one of the boat clubs, 
and was chosen its secretary ; in his junior year he 
made one of a small and congenial club table, was 
elected to the Natural History Society, and was 
enrolled as an original member and first secretary of 
the Harvard Glee Club. The Harvard class of 1859 
adopted a singular course in rei^udiating all Greek- 
letter societies, one effect of which was to throw the 
" Hasty Pudding " somewhat out of balance in its 
membership ; and Schouler took his exclusion in the 
senior year from that famous society with many class- 
mates of talent and moderate living; but intending 
to keep out of the new "O. K." as well, which had 
started in rivalry, he found himself chosen sponta- 
neously and by a unanimous vote. All these and 
other class distinctions to be presently noticed came 
to him entirely unsought. 

It was impossible that James should prove, as his 
fond Cincimiati teacher had predicted, the first 



230 BIOGRAPHY. 

scholar in his class. That impetuous energy which 
carried him so rapidly to college and the east 
exhausted itself with the attainment of its immediate 
end; and he found himself deficient in training 
besides, as compared with others of the class whose 
preparation had been more solid and systematic. 
His education had, in fact, been hasty, desultory, 
divided uj) among various schools and instructors, 
and only his own constancy had unified the results. 
From the Boston Latin School he met at Cambridge 
the most advanced portion of his former class joined 
to an earlier one; while his average schoolmates of 
1852 were among the next year's Freshmen. But 
his talents and industry assured him of at least a 
respectable stand. In a college class of about one 
hundred, he stood just within the line of the first 
quarter; high enough in rank to secure a part at the 
Senior May exhibition and on Commencement Day. 
In Harvard University, as at school, an evenness of 
development marked his mental progress. In themes 
and forensics strong power of expression rather than 
of thought seemed the characteristic, though his marks 
were high; and at an "Institute" debate of his 
Sophomore year, and the first in which he ever par- 
ticipated, he held his ground well against two expe- 
rienced opponents, though contending single-handed 
in his colleague's absence. He read a lecture before 
the same society on "Addison and Steele," which 
showed culture, and was impressively delivered. But 
he neither won nor sought any of the English com- 
position prizes. To declamation he addressed himself 
instead, knowing his surer strength, and won, as we 
have mentioned, a lower and then a higher prize. It 
was in the Junior year that his chum and he bore off 
the two first prizes. 



BIOGRAPHY. 231 

An incident is recalled at one of the college rooms 
about the beginning of Scliouler's Sophomore year, 
when an itinerant phrenologist came in. A number 
of the class who were present, and reckoned among 
the ablest, came forward to get their bumps examined; 
and the comments of the examiner, shrewd and 
humorous, were more or less complimentary. At 
length Schouler, who was in the modest background, 
came forward in his turn; when, to the surprise of 
his fellows, the phrenologist praised his head above 
all the others, predicting great things of him. 
"This was not much relished by the others," says 
our informant, "for Schouler, though rising in their 
esteem, was even then reckoned as of no great mental 
calibre; and they left him to pay the Spurzheim 
traveller out of his own pocket. But it seemed as if 
from that day the youth gained in self-assertion 
among his classmates, — a mental gift in which he 
seemed always rather deficient. He could arouse 
and even electrify upon the platform or where he had 
something special to deliver; but in the general witti- 
cisms and conversation of classmates he showed no 
special exuberance." 

This quiet constraint among his fellows, where 
brilliant talk went on, was greatly due to the gentle 
home influences which had moulded his character; 
and moreover to an inbred reluctance to "show off," 
as he called it, or force his talents upon the notice of 
male company. But for the infirmity of his later 
life this peculiarity would have worn off. For at 
the very time when this modest reticence drew the 
comment of classmates, James was the life of his 
home circle, and wherever else he felt intimate 
enough to make spontaneous mirth. His nicknames, 
his sport over college incidents which had impressed 



232 BIOGRAPHY. 

his sense of humor, his rollicking mimicry and mock 
theatrical rant, all mingled with his 'ready musical 
accompaniment, cheered and delighted such com- 
pany by the hour together. His mother and sisters 
would recount the merry pranks of his winter vaca- 
tion at home, when his spirits were highest, and 
would hum the lively tunes which he rattled oft" on the 
piano ; and so was it with dear friends among whom 
he tarried in the summer. Both in correspondence 
and personal intercourse, it seemed his mission at 
this stage of youth to cheer up those whose lives 
were arched with sorrow, imparting his own buoyancy 
and hopefulness. In all this young Schouler shone 
best in mixed company. Women seemed to arouse 
him to the best j)lay of his intellect -, and so quickly 
attractive was he to the fair sex that he entered the 
best society without an effort. Before he had finished 
his Sophomore year he was in the centre of a chann- 
ing Cambridge set of young men and women, and 
among: the foremost of his class in demand there at 
dances and evening parties. Though never taught a 
dancing lesson in his life, he moved with natural 
grace and rhythm through the quadrilles and country 
dances that then made the staple of our social func- 
tions. With a classmate, too, of congenial tastes and 
temperament, he was a most entertaining companion, 
for grave or gay converse, when they were off by 
themselves. 

But if taciturn and disposed to listen rather than 
talk, where college men were numerous, if unable to 
make a rattling, off-hand speech, or extemporize a 
good story, James soon showed a striking felicity 
with the pen in college diversions. At one of the 
earlier " Institute " meetings he contributed an effu- 
sion to the paper of one of the most popular editors,' 



BIOGRAPHY. 233 

which was so well received that the editor got him to 
write again, and then proposed and carried him in as 
a personal successor for the new term. The choice 
was vindicated; and Schouler as an "Institute" 
editor, particularly in a final paper which was mostly 
of his own composition, brought a tumult of applause 
and laughter. A college paper works up mirthful 
allusions to lessons, teachers, and the college social 
life, weaving together light analogies, puns, and word- 
play, all irradiated by the writer's fancy and imagina- 
tion, whether in prose or poetry. In such literary 
productions, our author attained marked excellence 
at college, as did also a classmate and friend, who 
became class poet; nor was the racy flight of either 
soiled by a gross or indecent thought. Each in turn, 
by such a start, gained wider college celebrity, as an 
editor of the " Harvard Magazine, " — a periodical in 
whose pages appeared, along with such 2^ersijiage., 
some more serious of their literary productions. 
Schouler's lighter efforts were invoked for another 
special paper before the class society in his Senior 
year; and when the class met socially, as mature 
men, on the silver anniversary of "1859," Schouler 
was once more singled out for editor. In such liter- 
ary work, which took many an hour from his college 
recreation, and doubtless from his studies besides, our 
author (aside from his gift of oratory) gained doubt- 
less his cliief college eminence, and was really a marked 
man in the class by the time he graduated. 

James took no great interest in athletic sports, nor 
did he ever cherish an athletic ambition. In all 
recreation, physical or mental, he disliked antago- 
nism, unless, at all events, many shared the burden of 
it. He would rarely enter a gymnasium; for gj^m- 
nastic exercise, unless carefully superintended, leads 



234 BIOGRAPHY. 

on to feats of daring which to the average boy means 
injury. But witliout such special training our author 
showed sound and robust health, and a capacity for 
mental and physical endurance, strengthened by 
temperate habits. He pulled a good oar, and 
belonged to the picked crew of his boat club while 
they made use of an old-fashioned barge ; but when a 
light shell and undress succeeded he dropped out. 
At Fresh Pond he regularly rowed as one of a merry 
young party of both sexes styled the "Arrow Club." 
Long walks, at college and in earlier and later life, 
have furnished his habitual exercise; and these he 
could enjoy either with company or alone. Con- 
venience, not to add economy, initiated such exertion 
in his Freshman year; for steam connection- with 
Boston had just been discontinued when he entered 
college, nor until the following April was the new 
street railway completed and equipped with horse- 
cars. Many a Saturday did he tramp over the bridge 
into the great city, through Boston and back again. 
Passing one Sunday in the winter with friends in 
the suburbs, when, after a violent snow-storm the 
skies cleared at noon, leaving the snow piled high, 
he walked to Boston to take the Sunday evening 
omnibus to Cambridge from Brattle Street; and, find- 
ing that it would not run, he pursued his solitary 
march on foot, plunging through immense drifts at 
Cambridgeport, just beyond the bridge, until at 
Cambridge he reached his room. Again, on a bitter 
cold Monday in January, 1859, when the thermometer 
ranged far below zero, he rose at four in the morning 
and walked from Boston to Cambridge in the dim 
dawn, reaching the college yard just as the first bell 
rang for prayers, which few othei-s attended; and 
about sunset of the same day, after the usual college 



BIOGRAPHY. 235 

routine, he walked back to Boston for an evening 
engagement. For, punctilious, at this youthful age, 
in all matters of duty or pleasure, he did not yield 
readily to external obstacles. 

Among his greatest pleasures in Boston were 
theatres, concerts, and operas, to which his father's 
newspaper connections afforded him many a free 
admission. The zest for such entertainments has 
lasted through his life without leading him to dissi- 
pation. The Sunday evening rehearsals of the Handel 
and Haydn Society he enjoyed quite regularly under 
a like permit, often walking in and out from 
Cambridge to attend them. Though in musical 
demand at Cambridge among the chapel and glee- 
club choristers as a second tenor, he never made 
much pretence to vocal skill; but his thirst for good 
music was intense, and with all the great oratorios, 
while they were practised, he became quite familiar 
as a listener. Most of his spare pocket-money in 
these college days, such as came from prizes or 
presents, he would devote to classical works of music 
and standard authors ; and he formed a library which 
seemed to grow, he hardly knew how. 

Cultivating always methodical habits, James, upon 
leaving home and entering college, opened a private 
cash account of receipts and expenditures, which he 
has never since discontinued; casting up periodically 
what he had spent for various objects, and estimating 
such appropriations as might be needful for the 
coming year. But not quite so minute as some great 
men have been, he has found it convenient to embrace 
various small outlays under some specific head, and 
then carry out the total. "Sundries " he named such 
recurring items in his Freshman accounts. 



236 BIOGRAPHY. 

James, also, at his father's request, opened a 
journal on the first of January, 1856; and this he 
continued to keep, not only through his college 
career, but in one form or another, down to the 
spring of 1868, when the pressure of manhood's cares 
made it too irksome for continuance. He used plain 
blank-books for this purpose, writing almost daily, 
until in 1862 he volunteered as a soldier and went 
into camp. During his military service, a large 
pocket-book, which he carried about in the vest, 
sufficed for diary and cash account together; and 
finally he made use of an annual printed calendar, 
which he would post about once a week in very brief 
phrase. Of his later substitute for diaries we shall 
speak hereafter. " For a busy man," says our author 
in reviewing his personal experience, " all such jour- 
nalizing involves a great waste of time, and I do not 
strongly recommend it, unless some incentive stronger 
than the mere chronicle of commonplace life or of 
commonplace thoughts and emotions presents itself. 
If you are engaged upon some remarkable exploit or 
expedition, whose record will prove of historical 
value, keeping a faithful diary may be of much con- 
sequence ; but otherwise it seems to me rather out of 
range with the rush and variety of modern life, and 
suits better the tranquil ways of the past and that 
remoteness into which newspapers and the telegraph 
seldom penetrate. To itemize from day to day in a 
line or a phrase is of very little use, whether for style 
or the habit of accuracy, or the delight of fertile 
reminiscence. Indeed, a well-kept cash account may 
serve your turn quite as well, besides proving useful 
in other ways. Self-examination at the close of each 
day, mental reflection, and the reporting habit, all 
find scope in such a task, if you find time enough to 



BIOGRAPHY. 237 

make the journal in literary excellence what it should 
be; but in that ' if ' consists the difficulty. Literary 
excellence of expression seems better gained by writ- 
ing for the press ; and furthermore, by laying your- 
self out in your private correspondence and aiming, 
with the time thus gained, to describe well your 
thoughts and feelings, together with what you have 
seen, in letters to your intimate friends. If you can 
get these letters back to read in after life, or even 
retain copies of them when sending them off, you 
have, with letters received in return, a better means 
for reproducing your past life than in any diary which 
one honestly means to remain private." Schouler's 
college journal, we may mention in passing, struck 
the medium between dry chronicle and an outpour- 
ing of the inner heart. But he has not derived 
the pleasure in reading over his own production 
that he had predicted at the outset; and lest some 
one else might peruse its pages hereafter he has 
destroyed it. 

James's Senior year at Harvard was full of devel- 
opment and activity. As one of the "Harvard 
Magazine " editors, and the most prominent of them, 
he took special burdens in its business management, 
besides composing much and preparing specially the 
number which belonged to a colleague who was 
absent, teaching school. By this time he was gaining 
fame in the class for serious as well as witty produc- 
tions. His article on the origin of "Class Day," in 
the October, 1858, number, drew academic notice at 
a time when the faculty had talked of abolishing the 
institution; and in tracing out its ancient establish- 
ment, he laboriously searched old newspapers and 
old college pamphlets among the libraries of the 
Athenseum and Historical Society in Boston; so that 



238 BIOGRAPHY. 

we may call this paper his first real essay at historical 
exploration. Articles grave and gay appeared from 
his pen in the January, 1859, number, besides what 
he contrilnited to the " Editors' Table ; " and in " Our 
Day Dreams, " he pleaded earnestly for buoyancy and 
enthusiasm rather than a cynical spirit when entering 
upon the battle of life. From June, 1858, he had 
l)een an organist and choir conductor each Sunday, — 
first, at Dedham, and then at the Church of the Advent, 
Boston, during a transition period of the latter parish, 
and while its rectorship was vacant. Warmly attached 
to the Dedham church and its pastor, he was con- 
firmed there, and joined the full Episcopal com- 
munion in the first month of 1859. With all these 
distractions from the curriculum, he kept up well in 
his studies, and gained in college rank. At the INIay 
exhibition preceding graduation, his part attracted 
unusual applause as a brilliant piece of composition 
eloquently spoken; "Douglas Jerrold" was his 
chosen subject, which he had worked up into a 
character sketch illustrating a warm disposition 
soured by long, unappreciated labor. 

In the mean time, on March 14, 1859, class elec- 
tion day had been reached, — that anxious goal of 
college politics. Some wished Schouler for class 
orator, — a distinction which had been his own secret 
desire ; but his star had risen too slowly and too late. 
Other circumstances were against him; and in a 
bitter party contest over class favors, from which he 
had kept aloof, his name was not presented as a 
candidate. But he received scattering votes for 
almost every class office, as a spontaneous recognition 
of merit. "You are honored by the whole class," 
said one of the class leaders after the meeting, "and 
you have not an enemy among them ; another office 



BIOGRAPHY. 239 

would have been given to you if you liacl signified 
your wish to receive it." 

Ever since May, 1858, his father's family had been 
back in Boston. William Schouler for nearly two 
years edited his Columbus paper, and performed 
effective work in organizing the political elements 
which firmly seated Republicanism in Ohio. During 
his five years' residence in that State he gained the 
personal friendship and confidence of such public 
leaders as Judge McLean, Thomas Corwin, and the 
man of massive statesmanship. Governor Salmon 
P. Chase. Abraliam Lincoln once toiled up the 
" Gazette " staircase, when in Cincinnati, to have a 
political chat with him ; and at Columbus, Howells, 
the famous fiction-writer of the future, set types for 
him. But Schouler was heartsick for Massachusetts, 
and for various friends in the old Bay State, now 
rising in influence, who urged him to return. A 
newspaper offer came at length from Boston; where- 
upon Governor Chase, reluctant to lose him, appointed 
him Adjutant-General of Ohio; hoping that the legis- 
lature would at once increase the trifling salary, and 
put the Ohio militia upon an organized footing. 
That bill failed of passage ; and Schouler would defer 
acceptance of his Boston offer no longer. A public 
dinner was given him at the State capital as a testi- 
monial on his departure; and Ohio long and affec- 
tionately cherished his name and political services. 
Schouler's welcome back to Boston and to the Boston 
editorial guild Avas no less hearty ; and under his san- 
guine direction the reorganized "Bee" — or "Atlas 
and Bee," as he chose to have it styled — started 
into circulation with some of those strong leaders 
of other days. But the venture was ill-advised, and 



240 BIOGRAPHY. 

with no solid capital behind it served merely for 
temporary aid in establisliing a new political party. 
Handicapped with mdigence and a precarious salary, 
the editor of this superfluous Boston press did, never- 
theless, the expected work in fusing some of the 
old Whig element of Massachusetts into this new 
Republican coalition whose national triumph was 
approaching. 

When the son's organ engagement at the Church 
of the Advent ended in April, 1859, the kind Dr. 
Shattuck, who was senior warden, offered to the 
young collegian a place among the instructors of St. 
Paul's School, at Concord, New Hampshire, — that 
famous institution for boys which his benevolence 
was then founding. The tender was wholly unex- 
pected; and as no credentials were asked, he had 
probably looked up the student's college record for 
himself. After a visit to the school, whose principal. 
Rev. Henry A. Coit, received him most cordially, 
James concluded an arrangement to take effect just 
after Class Day; and with this suddenly disclosed field 
of work came a new outlook upon active life. A 
vacancy in the chair of English literature happened to 
exist at Trinity College ; and with a new hope of in- 
fluence not unfounded for obtaining it, Schouler de- 
termined to devote whatever spare time his next year's 
work might afford, to post-graduate study in the ap- 
propriate branches. Early in his Junior year he had 
made up his mind to be a lawyer, and his father, 
when consulted, had approved the idea; but now, 
exchanging this plan for the other, he presented the 
set of Blackstone already on his book-shelves to a 
classmate who was sure to need it. Few Harvard 
graduates begin their serious career in life on the 
Senior leave-taking day, so as to make graduation 



BIOGRAPHY. 241 

and Commencement Day an episode to toil. But 
such was our author's experience; and among the 
distractions of a tutor at Concord he prepared his 
Conunencement part and returned to Cambridge to 
rejoin his class for the final exercises of July 20. The 
subject of his Commencement disquisition selected 
by himself was "Doctor Thomas Arnold," which, 
inspired by "Tom Brown's School Days," he treated, 
after much the same fashion as his Senior exhibition 
part, in characterizing the life-work of that Christian 
teacher at Rugby. Something in the speaker's 
manner and matter seems to have made an imj^res- 
sion; for a Boston evening paper mentioned that 
Governor Banks pronounced this the best piece in a 
programme of thirty or more parts. The class of 
1859 numbers many men illustrious in the various 
walks of life, though others of the highest promise 
on Commencement Day lost early their lives in the 
course of the Civil War. 

One little incident of this graduation may be here 
related for the first time. After the degrees had been 
announced, the class marshals went upon the stage 
to receive the baccalaureate sheep-skins, adorned 
with pink ribbon, and distribute them among the 
graduating candidates. Schouler's degree was not 
among them, which caused one or two expressions 
of concern; but he kept silence, mistrusting the 
cause, and found, on arriving home, that his father, 
who had undertaken to attend to his term-bill, had 
been unable to raise the money. " Father's mortifica- 
tion, " says our author, " must have been greater than 
my own ; for mother told me afterwards, that he sat 
under the elms on Boston Common, that evening, and 
shed silent tears over the want that had caused 
the son he loved a moment's ignominy." The money 

16 



242 BIOGRAPHY. 

was procured next day, the term-bill paid, and the 
parchment handed over; and James returned to 
Concord, there to continue work until the vacation 
of St. Paul's School came in October. 



VI. 

1860-1866. 

James Schouler was twenty years of age when 
he graduated from college; a young man marked 
among his classmates at Harvard for the happy blend- 
ing of talent, diligence, and sobriety, • — one who 
personally looked forward and urged others to look 
forward to active life with high aims and a high sense 
of honor. He appeared in blooming and vigorous 
health, with full visage and ruddy complexion, and 
without a sign of physical defect; his height, which 
was five feet eight inches, set off a well-proportioned 
figure. Other young men pronounced him handsome 
when well dressed, but one who seldom gave great 
thought to the tailor; to women he seemed always 
handsome. Praise never seemed to turn his head or 
make him conceited, but rather encouraged him to 
do well. His photograph, taken with the rest of the 
graduating class, was a strikingly good one ; showing 
a well-shaped head, well poised upon square shoulders ; 
a beaming expression of countenance ; a smooth oval 
face (for the mustache was worn later), which exposed 
a large mouth and full lips, strong index of the 
thought or feeling that stirred within; a good nose 
and chin, the heritage of the Schoulers ; a high and 
intellectual forehead; and soft hazel eyes, full of 



BIOGRAPHY. 243 

expression, wliich were perhaps his handsomest 
feature. "A fine face and head, indeed," said a 
good physiognomist wlio was shown one of these 
photographs. "That young man is sprightly and 
intelligent; but I should judge from the height of 
the back of his head that his organ of firmness is 
pretty fully developed, and that when he takes up an 
idea he sticks to it." 

Of his persoQal character, as it impressed members 
of the college faculty, the Plummer Professor ^ thus 
wrote to a friend a few months later: "He appears 
to possess excellent qualities for an academic officer. 
There is a certain soundness in his nature readily felt 
by all about him; a genuineness which is of the 
utmost worth in a society of young men. His mind 
and heart are full of health. There is a fine energy 
in his will, coupled with a conciliating gentleness 
and modesty of manner. He at once gives and con- 
sistently maintains the impression of a thorough 
manliness." After dwelling upon his capacity and 
strength as a scholar, and the concentration of studies 
which had probably carried him since graduation far 
beyond the respectable rank he reached in his class, 
he added: "Should his youth be thought an objec- 
tion (to a professorship) the dignity of his bearing 
goes far to outweigh that objection." And a former 
teacher, the superintendent of the Boston schools, 
referring to "his scholarly habits, his purity and 
elevation of character, and his generous ambition," 
said " without any qualification he is by far the best 
man for such a post whom I know of his age or very 
near his age." 

"The grand virtue of men is sincerity," Schouler's 
father had once written to him ; and the son did not 

1 Since Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Central New York. 



244 BIOGRAPHY. 

forget that precept. In the quiet retreat of New 
Hampshire, he strengthened his critical knowledge 
,of the Latin tongue, which occupied most of his 
instruction hours. He also conducted the chapel 
music, organizing the first choir from among the 
school-boys ; and during all the leisure time he could 
command from his routine work he studied the great 
English poets from Chaucer down, and the great 
prose writers, besides dipping into French and 
German translation. Modern history and rhetoric 
found also appropriate hours in a schedule varied by 
needful recreation, which he prepared, ranging from 
early dawn until bedtime. The school, since so 
famous, and now spreading out its vast array of 
imposing buildings over a large landscape, was as 
yet confined to a single stuccoed dwelling-house, to 
which was added a wing for school-room and dormi- 
tory. A pretty brick chapel stood close by; and the 
number of boys had increased to forty, which was 
thought a handsome limit. Pupils and teachers were 
so much of the time together under one roof, for 
meals, studies, sleep, and even recreation, that one 
longed sometimes to escape from himself and find a 
solitude. But amid distractions that cost the high- 
minded Dr. Coit himself many a nervous headache and 
night of sleepless anxiety the noble work was pur- 
sued; and our young Harvard graduate felt and 
aided the dignity of it. Not familiar with the boys, 
and yet friendly and considerate towards them, and 
gaining their warm respect in return, he went througli 
his tasks without serious difficulty, and maintained 
a steady discipline. In the few instances where 
boyish mischief tested him to get the upper hand he 
quietly contrived to disconcert it. His poetical muse 
did not wholly slumber through all this grind of 



BIOGRAPHY. 245 

study and recitation ; for on the anniversary day of 
the school, in January, 1860, an ode was sung of his 
own composition. 

On March 20, 1860, James reached majority, 
and thus made birthday record in liis diary: "If in 
after years I turn back to this leaf, and read its 
record of good resolutions, ardent hopes, and earnest 
prayers for the future, may I be able to add that the 
life to which I now look forward, was not spent in 
vain. I commence to-day to keep my accounts in a 
ledger and day-book (or journal), and shall hereafter 
keep them thus. I commenced my accounts of cash 
expenses when I entered college, and have kept them 
ever since ; but to-day I close the book. On taking 
an inventory of personal effects I find I may consider 
myself worth -f 138. 12." If all this grand book- 
keeping seems whimsical for a youth of scanty means 
to apply to tailor bills and salary payments, the 
method thus pursued worked out good grist after- 
Avards ; for it was largely due to his correct and syste- 
matic habits in these petty finances, besides his 
conscientious distinctions between meum and tinmi, 
that he secured confidence for the management and 
settlement of estates which constituted so large a 
part of his professional business a few years later; 
procuring him ample bondsmen, while he possessed 
very little property of his own. 

The year 1860 saw a brighter dawn for the 
Schouler household, and relief, for a good space at 
least, from the son's family anxieties. His next 
brother William, whom he had brought with him to 
Concord, to coach in college studies with reference 
to the ministry, worked into an admirable arrange- 
ment with Dr. Coit, which gave liim the full train- 



246 BIOGRAPHY. 

ing he had deeply at heart, and his independence at 
the same time. In Massachusetts, towards the close 
of March, his father received from Governor Banks 
the appointment of Adjutant-General of the State, — 
an appointment promised in old friendship months 
earlier, but deferred because of some military opposi- 
tion stirred up by the incumbent of the office. The 
latter procured a protest from the militia major- 
generals against a change ; and this proving in vain, 
a complimentary banquet to himself was arranged 
which three of the Governor's aids attended in rebel- 
lious dissatisfaction. Banks promptly revoked the 
commissions of these aids, fully equal to such an 
emergency; his staff was reorganized for the better, 
and William Schouler entered ujDon the duties of 
adjutant-general on Monday the 2nd of April. 

With this welcome change of pursuits, William 
Schouler made his residence at L3ain, where, near 
the Swampscott line, a modest seaside cottage became 
his family home for the next ten famous years ; and 
where, too, Janjes passed many happy summers, and 
sometimes the winter months besides. It was part 
of an estate owned by his wife's brother, who, with 
his own wife, occupied a neighboring house, making 
the summer reunion complete. The Schoulers were 
lovers of nature, and felt always a tenderness for this 
little cottage, resplendent in the eastern sun, with 
the changeful ocean in full sight beating out its daily 
harmonies upon the beach. And at Boston in his 
pleasant suite of offices on the southwestern corner 
of the Bulfinch State House, — in 1860 quiet enough 
as compared with the scenes twelve months later, — 
our new adjutant-general attended to his easy routine 
duties, receiving congratulations which poured in 
upon him from every j)art of the State. Personal 



BIOGRAPHY. 247 

friends presented him with his military uniform and 
sword, and on the earliest parades honored by the 
Governor and staff, his popularity was clearly seen. 
With a single clerk for assistant, as the law then 
provided, and for himself a salary of eighteen hun- 
dred dollars, which in its certainty seemed munificent, 
he retained the capable subordinate of his prede- 
cessor, and began at once to pay from his own 
quarterly savings the private debts which had greatly 
harassed him. 

A first year's public experience, and the last while 
our old mihtia peace establishment lasted, is worth a 
moment's notice. General Schouler first of all 
stopped an abuse of perquisites by which his prede- 
cessor had eked out an income. A Boston firm 
which furnished supplies to the State arsenal sent its 
bill to the adjutant-general, which was paid. Next 
it enclosed a personal check by way of percentage to 
the adjutant-general; and he deposited the check 
promptly in the treasury to the credit of the Com- 
monwealth, and ceased dealing with that firm. In 
the autumn the Prince of Wales visited Boston with 
his suite, and special escorts took place; and it 
pleased Governor Banks greatly to find that his new 
adjutant-general ended the year with an unexpended 
balance, having carried his department upon a saving 
of four thousand dollars over the year preceding, 
notwithstanding these ovations. 

Nathaniel P. Banks retired from office at the close 
of this year; and the fearless John A. Andrew suc- 
ceeded him in early January, 1861. Adjutant- 
General Schouler added paragraphs to his report of 
1860, as it now went through the press, forecasting 
the approach of civil war, and advising among other 
specific measures the issue of a general order for 



248 BIOGRAPHY. 

reorganizing the active militia of Massachusetts, 
and preparing to place it on a war footing. " You 
are far too modest, General, " said our war Governor 
to him, a few years later, when a boastful brigadier 
of the present Massachusetts militia, who rose to 
national renown, claimed to have inspired Andrew 
with the famous "General Order No. 4," of January 
16: "that order originated in your own recommen- 
dation, already in print, and the militia preparations 
of that winter which equipped Massachusetts for ready 
action were the fruits of our own concert and consul- 
tation." The son remembers well that while many 
influential citizens of the State were blaming the new 
Executive in that waiting winter for what they thought 
rash and incendiary preparations, he had his own grave 
doubts and stated them to his father ; but the response 
was such as assured him that all was right, and that 
the father was heart and soul with Governor Andrew 
in the whole business. Each had his own national 
acquaintance in Washington, and advices that con- 
firmed his military foresight. 

James Schouler had placed a year as the proper 
limit of his work at St. Paul's School, unless the 
way proved clear to the appointment he wished at 
Trinity College. His kind principal, and several 
influential trustees of that college, were his friends, 
and aided the promotion so zealously that, a vacancy 
occurring at this time in Trinity's presidency, the 
prominent candidate for successor promised, if chosen, 
to bring him into the faculty. But temporary oppo- 
sition to this candidate developed when the trustees 
met. The presidency was offered to another and 
declined; and meanwhile the vacant professorship of 
English literature went to a person of means who 



BIOGRAPHY. 249 

offered to serve without a salary. James, in conse- 
quence, announced his purpose of leaving St. Paul's 
School when the summer term of 1860 ended, and 
taking up the study of law. But Dr. Coit, who had 
more than once urged him to take orders, was reluc- 
tant to lose this assistant, and offered many induce- 
ments for him to remain and make his life-work at 
the school Avith leisure for liberal studies. He pre- 
dicted the future enlargement of that institution just 
as came later to pass. Though touched by such deep 
sympathy and appreciation, — for Dr. Coit was a most 
lovable man, — Schouler adhered to his own views. 
"I am not a recluse by temperament," was his reply, 
"and I must live among men, and not boys." They 
parted friends for life ; and with a brother left behind 
for a while among the instructors, James often 
revisited this haven of good influences. 

Once more in Massachusetts our author took up 
his law studies with zest, living at the parental home 
by the seashore. By early October, 1860, he was 
deep in Blackstone, which he would study each day 
at the State library, looking in upon the courts for 
an afternoon's inspiration, or reciting to himself 
what he had read as he strolled upon the common. 
On the 20th of November he entered the office of 
George D. Guild, Esq., in the famous ""4 Court 
Street" building. He was his preceptor's first and 
only law student ; for that promising member of the 
Boston bar, honorable and judicious, died untimely 
in 1862. Here James used the desk assigned to him 
so long as he continued a law student; finding in an 
older man who had only taken him in for instruction 
to oblige a friend, a genial personal acquaintance. 
Schouler did not confine himself to the law alone ; 
but taking advantage of hours which he was free 



250 BIOGRAPHY. 

to arrange to suit himself, he wrote a sketch of 
New England life, which, rejected by the " Atlantic 
Monthly," found its way into print, but not fame, 
through the medium of an obscure magazine which 
paid nothing for contributions, — "a better fate, " 
says our author, "than the essay deserved." He also 
explored at home by the evening lamp such books 
as " Judge Story's Life and Letters " and the 
"Federalist." "I am deeply interested in the 
political history of our country," he records in 
January, 1861 ; and a campaign book, which fell 
somewhat earlier into his hands, "Hall's Republican 
Party," with its historical sketch of jDolitical parties 
in the United States, stirred him earliest to make 
that subject his own for literary treatment some 
day. 

This was a winter of exciting suspense in public 
affairs, and the diary of our author shows how deeply 
his own interest was engaged. Though entering 
upon his majority as a Seward Republican, he had 
studied up the candidate, and believed him true and 
trustworthy. He rejoiced in Abraham Lincoln's 
triumphal election in November, and earnestly hojDed 
that there would be "no more compromises to secure 
the increase of slavery." A passage in one of Judge 
Story's letters which he came across seemed so per- 
tinent to the winter's discussion in Congress that he 
copied it out and got it inserted in one of the news- 
papers. He and his law preceptor, whose politics 
differed from his own, had many a characteristic 
office discussion on this subject, the one in fiery 
earnest, the other moderate and calm. At length in 
April, 1861, Fort Sumter fell, and all Boston blazed 
with enthusiasm as the militia regiments of Massachu- 



BIOGRAPHY. 251 

setts went forth, already organized and equipped, to 
the defence of the nation. 

Tlie adjutant-general had not been home for three 
days, and the son went up to the State House. 
"James," said his father, pointing to a heap of 
unopened letters, "you must help me out in this 
correspondence; I need your services." So the 
young laAV student became installed in the adjutant- 
general's inner office ; there performing the duty of a 
private secretary, and working off details discon- 
nected with rosters and commissions. He kept 
informed and imparted information on all topics of 
interest to soldiers and town authorities, incidentally 
making the acquaintance of the distinguished callers 
who thronged the State House at this time, of those 
earlier officers who recruited and led the Massachu- 
setts Volunteers to the front, and of the Governor 
and Executive officials besides. The Governor's 
Council fixed a fair standard of recompense for the 
new force of clerks in the military department; and 
out of his salary our author in less than six months 
repaid the uncle in full who had assisted him at 
college, and thus stood free from all money obliga- 
tions. He was not tempted, however, to turn into a 
new channel and make civil or military service his 
life pursuit ; but pursued his law studies still, as he 
might, availing himself of the precious hours of 
evening or early morning, and poring, as he travelled 
in the train, over the solid volume in law-calf which 
he carried back and forth. By January 18, 1862, 
he had passed his written examination before the 
Supreme Court in Suffolk County — "a very credit- 
able one," as Chief- Justice Bigelow afterwards told 
him — and was formally admitted to the Massachu- 
setts bar on the 23rd of the same month. When 



252 BIOGRAPHY. 

he ended finally his labors at the State House, he 
found lying upon the desk a commission of justice 
of the peace issued to him without an application; 
an unexpected token of thoughtfulness and good- 
will from the Governor, such as endeared that 
famous man so greatly to all who ever served under 
him. 

With an office in Niles's Block, whose expenses 
were shared by another young lawyer and college 
friend, and with a shining sign under his window, 
Schouler sought clients, and was not long kept wait- 
ing. A personal friend had handed him a note for 
collection, as the first piece of business following 
his admission to the bar. An inevitable swarm of 
soldier claimants sought him from the State House 
which his scrupulous father avoided all agency in 
directing. Our author's decided preference was for 
jury trials; and his first case of the kind came at 
once from the adjutant-general's office to launch his 
reputation. The colored messenger of that bureau, 
officiously but innocently, and most probacy as the 
dupe of some hangers-on at the State House, had 
passed a forged soldier's check, and was prosecuted 
for doing so in the United States District Court. 
The adjutant-general believed his innocence and 
stood by him ; but in those times an accused person 
could not testify at his trial, nor was evidence for 
the messenger procurable at all but that of good 
character. His young counsel, who served without 
recompense, conducted the case so skilfully upon his 
unsupported theory of innocence, and made so earnest 
a plea that the jury disagreed upon two trials, and 
the prosecution dropped. This messenger showed 
his gratitude by constant fidelity to the adjutant- 
general, serving for many years at the State House, 



BIOGRAPHY. 253 

and gaining a life-long renown among his own race 
for military talent and probity. 

With his second brother John appointed to the 
Naval Academy in 18G1, James was the only son 
left with his sisters in the parental household; and 
for a winter residence near Boston, where he might 
vote and claim liis domicile, he had chosen Dedliam, 
the county town of Norfolk. Friends welcomed him 
here, and the good rector of his former church made 
him the Sunday-school superintendent. His Boston 
practice brought liim a self-supporting income for 
the very first year. But he followed the progress of 
the Union strife with a constant uneasiness lest he 
should fall short of the duty he owed as a citizen. 
The first Bull Run battle of 1861, disheartening as 
it was, had impressed him with the true logic of our 
national situation. " We must now forego, " says his 
diary when the news arrived, "the expectation of 
crushing the rebellion at once, but must patiently 
pursue a long war ; and a bloody revolution is to be 
ushered in. I do not despair of the republic ; but I 
think the downfall of slavery is to be a result of this 
revolution. " 

The summer of 1862, which followed with its 
gloomy disasters, deepened his desire to be at the 
front with braver youth who were sacrificing for their 
country. He was now twenty-two years of age. 

" Shall I be carried to the sky 
On flowery beds of ease ? " 

he asks himself in his diary, quoting a well-known 
hjTun. He took part in July at a Dedham town- 
meeting called to raise volunteers, making there the 
first political speech of his life. When in early 
August Massachusetts was called upon for nineteen 



254 BIOGRAPHY. 

thousand nine months' men, he could hold back no 
longer, but enlisted in a Boston company which his 
office-mate had begun raising. Released from this 
roll under an authority \\dth a poj)ular Dedham youth 
to raise a Dedham company, their conjoint appeal, 
with the co-operation of selectmen and committee, 
brought the maximum number to their standard in a 
single day. Young men, the flower of the town, 
enlisted. Schouler's friend was chosen first lieuten- 
ant and he the second. An older man from outside 
was summoned as captain; and the company soon 
went into camp at Readville, attached to the Forty- 
third Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers. Pro- 
fessional business was now turned over for non- 
combatants to manage. Drill, tactics, military study, 
superseded civil pursuits, and, like Gibbon, our 
author may say that an experience of this kind was 
not without its later help towards preparing historical 
narrative. But, as young Schouler wrote his father 
from the field, he had gone into the service, not for 
fame nor from any relish for military life ; but solely 
to perform what a young and able-bodied citizen 
owed to his country. 

On the 12th of November, 1862, the Forty-tliird 
Massachusetts reached by transport the North Caro- 
lina coast ; and except for the Goldsboro' expedition 
passed most of its time quietly about Newbern, like 
most of the other nine months' troops from that 
State. But Lieutenant Schouler, detailed at once 
for Signal Service, on reaching the front, learned the 
]\Iyer code with some other nine months' officers, and 
gained a far -wider occupation than would have been 
possible in the regimental line. He served thus in 
various staff positions with illustrious officers of the 
army and navy. He was \\\i\\ a river fleet of gun- 



BIOGRAPHY. 255 

boats which were sent to co-operate with the Golds- 
boro' movement, being once under fire, but other^vise 
encountering incidents more humorous than heroic. 
He took his turn with flag and torch in charge of a 
lonely signal-station on the line of the railroad 
between Newbern and Morehead City. He served 
on General Naglee's staff in a winter's expedition to 
South Carolina, and after being detached for duty in 
that department, he accompanied General Stevenson's 
forces to North Edisto inlet at the close of March, 
1863, in wliich harbor he served on board various 
naval gunboats, communicating with the shore, until, 
towards the close of May, at his own request, he was 
sent back to North Carolina in season to rejoin his 
regiment on its return home. While at Edisto inlet 
he went on board some of the new and curious iron- 
clads brought thither. He saw the splendid fleet of 
Admiral Dupont sail forth on a bright Sunday morn- 
ing to capture Charleston, and then return crestfallen 
after a mere reconnoissance. Reconnoitring pre- 
viously before Charleston harbor in the vessel to 
which he belonged, he discerned Fort Sumter and 
Sullivan's Island through his signal telescope. Home- 
ward bound from Newbern in June with his regiment 
once more, he passed a night off Yorktown, went into 
temporary camp at Old Point Comfort, and touched 
port at Baltimore about the first of July. The 
glorious news of Gettysburg was here received ; and 
part of his regiment, though claiming that their 
time was up, went towards Harper's Ferry to aid in 
the effort to intercept Lee's retreat. While on ]\Iary- 
land heights doing provost duty as officer of the day, 
among these grand and picturesque surroundings, 
our young lieutenant saw the tattered Army of the 
Potomac pass by in vain pursuit of the enemy. Back 



256 BIOGRAPHY. 

once more by slow trains to Baltimore, and entitled 
for this special service to the badge of the Sixth 
Army Corps, the fragment of this Forty-third Mas- 
sachusetts Regiment proceeded to Boston, and on 
the morning of July 21 the troops breakfasted and 
greeted their rejoicing friends on Boston Common; 
next proceeding to Boylston Hall, where they broke 
ranks and dispersed. 

James's pocket diary and letters to the family 
describe very fully this army experience ; and what- 
ever his secret dread or privations, they kept up the 
constant strain of loyalty and cheerfulness. In per- 
sonal habits he had always been abstinent, though by 
no means an anchorite; and during his army life, 
with so many young men of good parentage under 
him to whom example was everything, he resolved 
not to smoke nor drink a drop ; and that resolve he 
faithfully kept. As for smoking, he has often said, 
that though his father was an inveterate consumer of 
the weed, he went through college and through army 
life without ever indulging the habit ; after which he 
took it up in moderation for social companionship 
alone. From the day of his enlistment he appeared 
constantly confident that he should return home in 
health and safety; and he was so carelessly secure 
of life, that, having his revolver stolen soon after 
reaching the seat of war, he finished his long cam- 
paign with no weapon about his person except his 
sword. Camp life had at once made him rugged and 
hearty, the picture of health when he started on his 
perilous mission ; and so it continued until the jour- 
ney home. But while encamped on Federal Hill 
near Baltimore, a night's exposure to a heavy rain 
brought on a fever and ague so acute that he dragged 



BIOGRAPHY. 257 

his way on the Harper's Ferry march with the utmost 
difficulty, and reached home again pale, feeble, and 
utterly exhausted. A few weeks of tender care at 
the seaside cottage brought him out, as it seemed, all 
right again; after which, at the close of August, 
1863, he was sent to Washington, under special State 
House orders, to procure copies of the deficient 
muster rolls of Massachusetts troops at the war 
department. This first visit to the national capital, 
though in the hot season of recess, was an unfailing 
delight, and fixed him in the wish to connect himself 
more intimately with the historic district upon the 
Potomac. While at Washington he gained a vivid 
impression of our capital city in its war aspect: he 
strolled through its deserted temple of legislation and 
the busy Executive buildings; he met President 
Lincoln four times face to face; he conversed with 
Secretary Chase, who received him cordially; he 
dined at the family table with Secretary Seward, — 
a special attention with incidents which he never for- 
got; and he took in the faces and forms of Stanton, 
Welles, Halleck, and others of the magnates who 
then presided over the gigantic strife. Returning to 
Massachusetts, he adjusted mistakes, whereby he had 
been drafted in two places while soldiering the past 
winter; and by the first of October, at the age of 
twenty-four, he was once more in Niles's Block, 
Boston, with his former law companion, sharing a 
more commodious office than before, and starting the 
professional life anew. As a tribute to his military 
efficiency he received from Washington headquarters 
the tempting offer of a captaincy in the new Signal 
Corps, which had been lately organized under an Act 
of Congress, and, as its officers hoped, was virtually 
and permanently a part of the regular army ; but he 

17 



258 BIOGRAPHY. 

heeded liis motlier's wishes and declined all further 
military life. 

Clients now poured in upon young Schouler again ; 
and most of all the war claimants, whom he tried 
vainly to bar out, so as to give to court practice the 
full precedence. In November, 1863, Governor 
Andrew appointed him a public administrator of 
Suffolk County; an office still retained, which famil- 
iarized him with probate business and the settlement 
of estates. This appointment made it needful for him 
to leave Dedham finally and make Suffolk County his 
place of residence; but he still passed liis summers 
with parents and sisters at the seashore, they, too, 
sojourning usually in Boston during winter months, 
where he resided. His professional practice was at 
once lucrative, as recommenced, and yielded him a 
handsome support; so that with a trifling balance 
which he had saved from his army pay, he was now 
able to start his little capital by investing in a gov- 
ernment bond. His office-mate soon leaving the 
legal profession for journalism in another city, 
Schouler rented the whole office, and then added 
the adjoining one for his own business needs ; pres- 
ently making room in the suite for his college class- 
mate and constant friend, Ellis L. Motte. He 
showed himself public-spirited in politics; he read 
the Declaration of Independence at Boston's Fourth 
of July celebration in 1864, and next found himself 
selected to present and read the resolutions at a 
Presidential ratification meeting held by the Rei:)ub- 
licans about ten weeks later at Faneuil Hall. After 
speaking at various local rallies he cast in November 
the first national vote of his life for President Lin- 
coln's re-election. 



BIOGRAPHY. 259 

But now appeared marked symptoms of a physical 
disorder which was soon to suppress the social activi- 
ties of our author and turn the current of impetuous 
achievement into a new and more quiet channel. 
He had during his college career perceived a partial 
deafness in the left ear, of which he only made jest, 
as a positive convenience whenever hilarity went on 
too noisily about him. Few noticed this difficulty at 
all, and none had thought it the slightest hindrance 
to his chosen pursuits before he returned from the 
seat of war. Watchful of himself, however, he con- 
sulted a physician for the first time in November, 
1859, as his diary shows us; and Dr. Edward 
Reynolds of Boston told him that on the left ear was 
the scar of an ulcer which hindered the drum from 
vibrating, — a troul^le that could not be remedied. 
Soon after young Schouler came home from his army 
service, and in close connection with the fever and 
ague which he had contracted in Baltimore, deafness 
spread to the other ear, and those at home quickly 
detected his difficulty. On July 24, 1863, he began 
a regular course of treatment with a Boston physi- 
cian, reputed a specialist in such cases, — " the 
first," observes our author, "among many courses of 
one kind and another, which I have patiently tried 
from year to year without obtaining the slightest 
relief." Insidious in approach, as it always con- 
tinued, producing neither dizziness, ringing in the 
ears, nor other mental inconvenience in the least 
degree, — the dread foe speedily advanced ; and by 
another year and after a slight recurrence of his army 
fever in July, 1864, people began to perceive that 
he heard imperfectly, and they raised their voices 
slightly when accosting him. 

During October, 1864, Schouler consulted in New 



260 BIOGRAPHY. 

York City an eminent specialist, who told liim the 
nature of his difficulty, and strongly advised him to 
place himself under the care of Dr. Edward H. 
Clarke of his OAvn city as the very best man for relief. 
"See," he added, "whether he does not explain your 
case as I do." Our patient did so, and found that 
the two physicians agreed in their diagnosis upon a 
personal examination. There was a calcareous de- 
posit within the drum of each ear, whose tendency, 
from some inner predisposing cause, was to thicken, 
and thus prevent the drum from vibrating properly. 
But whence this predisposing cause no medical ad- 
viser ever explained. "All calcareous deposit," 
once said a European doctor to our author, "origi- 
nates in rheumatism;" and the rheumatic sickness 
which he brought home from the war was his first 
real departure from sound health since an early 
childhood remarkably free from the average child's 
ailments. He sometimes caught cold and had 
coughs; but so, too, have others in normal health. 
No perceptible relief has come from treatment on the 
catarrhal theory nor by electricity or massage. Allop- 
athy, homceopathy, perforation of the drum, have 
alike failed to improve his hearing or even to check 
its deterioration. To various doctors he has sug- 
gested that perhaps a scalp-wound or a laceration of 
the right hand, both injuries of boyhood which left 
permanent scars, had something to do with this de- 
posit; but they reject each hypothesis. No heredi- 
tary deafness is traceable in the parental stock. But 
as for Dr. Clarke, of whose advice he now availed 
himself in Boston while he could, that eminent ph3'si- 
cian inspired him with great confidence by the skill 
he showed, by breadth of information, and by what 
among medical advisers is so often lacking, — fertil- 



BIOGRAPHY. 261 

ity in resources. His owii j)i'ofessional effort was to 
produce absorption of calcareous matter in the blood ; 
but at tbe same time leaving no other experiment 
untried, he sent out his patient to try electricity, and 
afterwards recommended him to a young aurist who 
was fresh from European schools and the latest dis- 
coveries. When friends of the author had spoken of 
a wonder-working German instrument for operations 
upon the deaf, he produced such an instrument from 
his closet and showed very clearly why it could not 
benefit one like him. 

In short, from all the many medical men here and 
abroad, whom our author has since consulted in the 
vain hope of at least arresting the progress^ of his 
physical disability, he has extracted no advice more 
alleviating than that which this most admirable phy- 
sician bestowed as the epitome of his own experience 
in the case, — to " avoid over- work and take care of 
the general health." 



VII. 

1866-1872. 

General William Schouler, by virtue of the 
exalted military station which he filled in Massachu- 
setts, during the whole period of our Civil War, and 
while the noble John A. Andrew was Governor, 
remains among the devoted citizens of that State who 
best deserve an imperishable remembrance. With 
such a chief to serve under in his full prime, and 
such a chance for public usefulness, he felt the stimu- 
lus to high exertion, and did his best faithfully, 
patiently, and patriotically under the immense pres- 
sure of new labors which were imposed upon his 



262 BIOGRAPHY. 

office. In the fearful trial through which Massachu- 
setts was now summoned to pass, he showed in all 
their strength the shining qualities of his character; 
so that whatever fellow-citizen might possibly have 
excelled him in a certain polish that comes from 
scholastic training, no man could, all in all, have 
been so well qualified for the adjutant-generalship at 
this time as he who went through these tremendous 
years of war with his executive commander-in-chief 
to the costly goal of victory. 

Our adjutant-general was not content with the 
orderly functions of a bureau which, of all others, 
is apt to get all too readily into the grooves of mar- 
tinet and punctilious authority. He organized and 
recruited Massachusetts regiments, consolidating frag- 
mentary bodies in the State camps, and applying 
immeasurable tact and kindness to reduce the friction 
so constantly engendered among raw military aspirants 
and raw enlisted men, and to draw all together into 
harmony for the common weal. Besides other high 
officials and legislators in his o^vn State, he had 
national military organizers and officials to encounter, 
and to move smoothly with, in a common task wliich 
could not possibly escape asperities on the one hand 
nor permit of haughty compulsion on the other. " It 
was in this place," records one good observer, "that 
he had the best opportunity to show that warmth of 
sympathy and true democratic instinct which no man 
ever possessed in a higher degree." Nor did his 
labors cease with the routine performance of such 
duties. "He worked for the soldier," says another, 
"with all the devotion of a personal friend. While 
marshalling and directing large numbers of armed 
men, he did not forget that they were torn from the 
homes of a lifelong peace to do the unaccustomed 



BIOGRAPHY. 263 

work of cruel war. Not a man went to tlie front 
from Massachusetts during the whole of that dreary 
period, without feeling that the friendship and sym- 
pathy of the adjutant-general accompanied him. He 
knew the stuff of which our regiments were made." 

Easily assumed by spectators to have failings for 
such a task, though admitted by all who knew him 
as one of the most genial of men, ha\dng qualifica- 
tions of zeal, industry, and honesty which none 
could deny, he proved his higher directing qualities 
from year to year, until executive and legislature 
accorded in their full confidence. In fact, his long 
and intimate knowledge of Massachusetts, not to 
add of men and politics in Washington and at the 
northwest, was beyond that of all others who worked 
at the State House ; while his long journalistic expe- 
rience made him fluent and expressive with the pen, 
— an advantage by no means slight in those times 
of multitudinous composition. As for the more 
technical work of his bureau. Senator Wilson con- 
veyed the commendation of the war department at 
Washington that Massachusetts rolls and records 
there were the most perfect of all the States. Nor 
content with this, he wove into his annual reports, 
which were marvels of spontaneous industry, such 
full and accurate accounts of the experience of 
Massachusetts volunteers in the field, as circulated 
those public documents far and wide for fireside 
reading, and furnished to other States an example of 
adjutant-general and war annalist at the time wholly 
unique. And thus it worked out that the new Gov- 
ernor, who liimself had not fully understood the 
capacity of the man whom he found already in place, 
began the militarj^ labors which our President's first 
call devolved upon liim, by detaching the quarter- 



264 BIOGRAPHY. 

master and ordnance bureaus from the control of his 
adjutant-general, and transmitting orders to his cliief 
of staff tlu'ough a coterie of militaiy aids; but as 
time went on he drew more and more closely into a 
personal military relation with his adjutant-general, 
attracted by the latter's sagacious counsel on all diffi- 
cult points, his faithful disinterestedness and wide 
experience, his unassuming talents, and, not least of 
all, by those traits of good fellowsliip which they had 
in common, and which gradually endeared them to 
one another like brothers in arms. "The relations 
that existed between these two men," it has been 
well said by a contemporary, " were of the closest and 
most affectionate character;" and "their friendship 
grew out of the innate generosity and manliness of 
both ; for neither could brook meanness or littleness 
in any of its manifestations." 

The adjutant-general's intercourse with his own 
bureau subordinates was marked by the tenderest 
solicitude ; and while he kept them up to their work, 
he erred, if at all, on the side of kindliness and good- 
nature. For instance, the clerk who succeeded 
James as private secretary, the son of an old friend, 
came too well recommended; for though a neat 
coj)yist, it proved that he could not compose readily 
nor accurately; yet, rather than wound a father he 
loved or a son whose faithfulness was unimpeachable, 
the adjutant-general went on through the war, bear- 
ing the disadvantage as he might, though compelled 
in consequence to elaborate the drafts of most official 
letters, while harassed with other drudgery. 

While organizing well, General Schouler pursued 
a primary system of his own ; which was to bind his 
bureau by red tape as little as possible, consistently 
with general order and accuracy, and to make it 



BIOGRAPHY. 265 

headquarters whither all might resort, the highest or 
the humblest, man or woman, and gain information 
and comforting words for those far away to whom 
the nation and Commonwealth owed a debt of grati- 
tude. Accordingly, while he left military commis- 
sions and orders to the supervision of his faithful 
clerk, now promoted to a staff officer, and confided 
other routine duties to capable heads, he reserved to 
himself and to his inner office the immense miscel- 
laneous correspondence and public intercourse of the 
department. Those familiar with our general were 
amazed at his facility in working off all inquiries by 
mail or in person, so as to inform without offending ; 
doing, if possible, the thing wanted and in the 
quickest way. His grasp of the day's duties was 
remarkable; and his secretary, asking at noon how 
certain letters by the morning's mail that he had 
glanced at were to be answered, would find that he 
had orally responded and settled the point while 
down town. A flavor of hearty interest quite char- 
acteristic pervaded in consequence his busy emana- 
tions ; few men could so well combine social and 
political talk with business. The Governor liked to 
refer papers to him for a formal report, because the 
general not only stated difficulties well, but was sure 
to suggest some sensible plan for escaping them. As 
for those huge annual reports, they, like his volumes 
of military history afterwards, were planned, arranged, 
and written out entirely by himself; and he would 
work over them in the long evening hours of winter 
as a labor of love while he boarded with his family in 
Boston. Often, as men passed by on Beacon Street 
while pursuing their evening pleasures, did they see 
across the State House terraces the light shining 
through the brown window-shade at the southwest 



266 BIOGRAPHY. 

corner where the adjutant-general sat composing at 
his solitary desk. 

The close of the war found General Schouler happy 
in his appreciated public labors. The Massachusetts 
legislature, unsolicited, had passed an Act which 
raised his rank from brigadier to major-general; it 
had also increased his salary to a self-supporting 
standard, though, as he sometimes remarked, he 
would have preferred his original eighteen hundred a 
year payable in gold, had that been possible. John 
A. Andrew, on retiring from office after the war had 
ended, paid him the worthiest of tributes in an Execu- 
tive Order which he purposely penned and issued as 
the last official act of his own illustrious career as 
Governor.^ Under his son's legal direction, William 
Schouler had recently discharged the long-sustained 
burden of personal debt by assigning over his share 
in his deceased father's estate ; so that if not o^vning 
a dollar at this time, he could not be said to owe one. 
Watchful of convivial temptations, whose danger he 
well understood, he had lately pledged himself to total 
abstinence, that nothing might be wanting for leaving 
to his children the legacy of an unblemished name. 

One would have thought that an adjutant-general 
of such a character and services was sure of retaining 

1 As the full scope of the historical compliment thereby intended 
is sometimes misapprehended, this executive military order, composed 
by Governor Andrew himself, is subjoined : — 

January 6, 1866. 
Executive Military Order No. 1. 

The Governor and Commander-in-Chief, at the moment of retir- 
ing from office, as his last official act, tenders this expression of grate- 
ful and cordial respect to Major-Geueral William Schouler, Adjutant- 
General of the Commonwealth, who has served the country, the 
Commonwealth, and his chief with constancy, devotion, ability, and 
success, throughout his administration. John A. Andrew. 



BIOGRAPHY. 267 

long his place. "You will hold it all your life," 
said a member of the retiring Governor's staff, a 
fellow-citizen of the incoming Executive. Yet adju- 
tant-generals hold office in Massachusetts at the sole 
Avill of the Governor and Commander-in-Chief ; nor did 
this single year, 1866, end before he had been hurled 
headlong from his military office with cruel oppro- 
brium and privation. "Enjoy your military honors 
and let politics alone," had been the prudent advice 
of liis son; but to one of the father's habits and 
temperament this was scarcely possible. Diuing the 
war he had applauded the President's sagacious 
policy like any civilian voter; and after Lincoln's 
death, he, like Governor Andrew, deprecated vindic- 
tiveness in dealing with the South, and believed, 
with all generosity for the negro, that the lately 
rebellious States must ultimately depend upon their 
natural leaders. So when General Benjamin F. 
Butler, of Lowell, a man of methods and influence 
long obnoxious, swooped upon the Essex district as 
a candidate for Congress, pledged in advance to 
impeach President Johnson and make things hard for 
the rebels, General Schouler, as a resident voter of 
that district, opposed the nomination, and, failing to' 
defeat it, announced in a published letter his inten- 
tion to vote against him. Butler was chosen, how- 
ever, and demanded of the new Governor in revenge 
the displacement of the adjutant-general. Precipi- 
tately, perhaps weakly. Governor Bullock complied 
with the demand ; Schouler was summarily removed, 
and in the correspondence which led up to this re- 
sult, the Executive stated, as the sole reason for such 
action, that each public officer was under an obli- 
gation to vote for the regular candidate of the party. 
Though deeply grieved by this indignity. General 



268 BIOGRAPHY. 

Schouler was not ruined or wrecked in consequence. 
He confided the whole correspondence to his son in 
the afternoon of December 14, 1866, when the catas- 
trophe was complete, asking liim to break the news to 
the household before his own return home at night. 
"The only one," says this letter, "with whom I have 
conferred, and who knows all about it, is Governor 
Andrew." James did as requested; and by the time 
the husband and father reached Lynn his family 
received him with the cheering consolation that a 
man needs in such moments. James proposed at 
once a plan for their office connection, more especially 
in the war-claims branch of his practice; and the 
offer was accepted. The sympathy of the adjutant- 
general's warm friends also expressed itself, as soon 
as the situation was made public, in a circular letter 
signed by many of the most eminent citizens of the 
State, which Governor Andrew procured and headed, 
and which invited him to write a history of Massa- 
chusetts in the war. This invitation he also accepted, 
entering at once upon the collection of materials, but 
refusing all recompense in advance of publication, 
such as his friends in their kindness were prepared to 
bestow. 

This work, comprised in two large volumes, the 
labor of his next five years of prolific activity, was 
the perfection of his noble memorial of the State's 
patriotic action and record; minute, faithful, and 
interesting, as critics have pronounced it, ranking 
among the best of local war histories, and necessarily 
engraving the author's name upon each living page. 
The first volume was given to the political and mili- 
tary development of Massachusetts affairs during 
those momentous years, — and was indeed a noble 
tribute to Governor Andrew, whose untimely death 



BIOGRAPHY. 269 

he mourned while preparing it ; the second grouped, 
in a more statistical form, the detailed work of the 
different cities and towns. A third volume, which 
General Schouler projected, but did not live to com- 
pose, would have narrated the tale of Massachusetts 
regiments in the field, and its basis would necessarily 
have been his own annual reports. Under the office 
partnership he had formed he was practically his own 
' publisher; and the Massachusetts legislature, to its 
lasting credit, rendered the publication a pecuniary 
success by ordering a thousand copies of each volume 
for State distribution. 

The office partnership of father and son — though 
the latter alone was a member of the bar — worked 
out its expected advantage, in the union of high 
mental qualities and practical experience in which 
each might supplement the other; at the same time 
that the war-claims business, which each disliked, 
was felt to be a dwindling one, and other resources 
were exploited. Besides the petty bounty and pen- 
sion cases came in various large miscellaneous claims, 
to which the late adjutant-general's skill and expe- 
rience were applied successfully. Their most impor- 
tant work together lay in applying a judicial 
correction to the discretion of the treasury officials, 
hitherto arbitrary. James had made a careful study 
of the history and jurisdiction of the new Court of 
Claims, which an exhaustive article from his pen on 
" Government Claims " set forth about this time in 
the "American Law Review;" and to that tribunal 
at Washington the Schoulers brought a number of 
petitions on behalf of war claimants who had been 
denied relief at the departments by what appeared to 
them a legal misconstruction. Of these the Hosmer 



270 BIOGRAPHY. 

case, the sole and entire triumph of this partnersliip, 
is the most remarkable ; by whose adjudication thou- 
sands of our early volunteers, all through the loyal 
States, reaped the just benefit of their bounty contract 
with the President, a fair share of the Massachusetts 
men interested becoming clients of the firm that 
tested their rights. ^ The father, who had noted this 
public breach of contract while adjutant-general, pre- 
sented the points to his son; whereupon the latter 
prepared with all legal formality this test case, con- 
ducting and arguing it at Washington in person on 
the plaintiff's behalf before the Court of Claims, and 
on appeal before the Supreme Court of the United 
States ; for to both of those tribunals he was admitted 
in 1867 as an attorney. The Court of Claims decided 
unanimously in his favor ; and so on appeal did the 
Supreme Court, rendering final judgment for the 
claimant. The accounting officers of the treasury 
were at once disposed to submit; but the appropria- 
tion required for this class of claimants throughout 
the Union was so great that they waited for the 
further sanction of Congress, which by 1872 was 
procured ; pending which delay the Schoulers brought 
similar petitions for other claimants to be advanced if 
needful. Llean while, upon the Attorney-General's 
advice, the government settled without a contest 
various miscellaneous suits which this Boston firm 
had entered in the Court of Claims on behalf of 
clients. The Hosmer case was in fact the only 
soldiers' test case arising out of the war in which 
the Executive department was positively overruled. 

1 For the legal issue involved in this celebrated case, which arose 
upon a discrepancy between the terms of the President's original call 
for loyal volunteers and the Act of July 22, 1861, by which Congress 
legalized that call, see Hosmer v. United States, 9 Wall. 432. 



BIOGRAPHY. 271 

There was one more, however, whose justice our 
Boston fii-m was equally prepared to maintain, — that 
of a battalion of Massachusetts artillery pronounced 
"home-guards;" but a statute of limitations barred 
the test suit, and this technical defence the Attorney- 
General gladly interposed. 

Local revolt against party discipline and the Execu- 
tive injustice carried General Schouler into the State 
senate the next year after his displacement from 
office; and in the Massachusetts legislature of 1868 
he advanced his high public reputation by constant 
and capable work. Men worked more dexterously 
in these modern days of politics than in old Whig 
times for their own selfish advancement; or perhaps 
he would have mounted higher. A second revolt 
against Butler in the Essex congressional district 
followed in autumn of the same year, strongly organ- 
ized when it started; and William Schouler had 
modestly hoped that it meant his own nomination by 
the independents; but the cards were arranged for 
another candidate, a professional man of eminent 
talent and principle, but personally most unpopular 
and with claims to a residence in the district scarcely 
less pretentious than those of Butler himself. In the 
disastrous canvass which followed, the son stumped 
the rural towns in his father's place, more for a 
brush with the adversary than anj^thing else ; but the 
audacious hero of New Orleans, who put almost every 
other speaker of the opposition upon his self-defence, 
bore this young assailant in silence. James declined 
all recompense for his campaign efforts, and received 
from the defeated candidate a handsome letter of 
thanks ; but never again in his life did he take part 
in a political canvass. Not very long after, William 
Schouler moved from Lynn, from the Essex district. 



272 BIOGRAPHY. 

and his seaside cottage, and for the brief remnant of 
his life resided with his wife and daughters in 
(Jamaica Plain) West Roxbury; a pleasant suburb of 
Boston, which has since been absorbed into that 
populous city. 

When General Grant became President of the 
United States, March 4, 1869, James Schouler went 
to Washington, and there opened a branch office in 
temj)orary partnershij) with his father and his friend 
Motte, who managed the Boston concerns in an office 
on Kilby Street, while he attended to the court 
practice and such other business as might develop at 
the national capital. He was a spectator at Grant's 
inauguration, and has witnessed almost every similar 
ceremony since. One lives at our national seat of 
government without residing there ; and as our 
young lawyer had journeyed thither much of former 
years, with a batch of unfinished matters requiring 
a personal visit, the traditions of this famous 
place, its great men and memories, delighted him 
even more than its easy gayeties and free social 
intercourse. His father, too, had been drawn to 
Washington in earlier years, forming there many 
warm acquaintances who received the son with kind- 
ness and hospitality. 

But there were other serious reasons for this 
change of abode connected with the literary plans 
young Schouler was now forming. He had struck 
already into the career of a professional writer while 
exploring government business to its full horizon in 
articles contributed about tliis time to the " American 
Law Review" on "Customs and Internal Revenue," 
"Public Lands," "Government Loans," and "Gov- 
ernment Contracts." Calling, about 1865, upon liis 



BIOGRAPHY. 273 

office neighbor in Boston, the venerable Judge 
Redfield, a man immersed in law-book publications, 
to solicit some copying for a friend: "it is not a 
copyist I want," was the response, "but a head." 
Out of that conversation grew an arrangement under 
which young Schouler did some annotation at his 
leisure on the judge's law treatises; and out of that 
annotation came an offer from the judge's law pub- 
lishers, Little, Brown & Co., of Boston, to publish 
any treatise which Schouler might write on a good 
subject, upon the same favorable terms that they 
gave to the judge himself. After casting about for 
a topic, Schouler chose the "Domestic Relations," — 
a choice at once approved and applauded. Tliis 
Washington abode our author thought desirable for 
the tranquil task of preparation; and most of that 
celebrated text-book was composed in the great law 
library of the Capitol amid fit historical surroundings 
which inspired him. 

Accident turned our author, while this literary 
labor occupied him, to the new commission of three 
for codifpng the United States statutes, which 
Congress determined to establish in place of an old 
commission which had done nothing ; and he apj^lied 
in form for appointment to the third and only place 
not bespoken upon this commission. " It is the only 
national office," writes our author, "for which I ever 
applied in my life; and I applied in the confidence 
that it was intended to be a place not for politicians, 
but for expert lawyers who would despatch a needful 
work." The Attorney-General at a first interview 
derided to his face the presumption of one so young, 
"an objection," suggested one of the Massachusetts 
delegation, "which will diminish every day;" but 
when young Schouler's credentials came in, from 

18 



274 BIOGRAPHY. 

Massachusetts judges and lawyers most competent, 
some of whom had just examined the advance -sheets 
of his new book which was going tlirough the press, 
this Cabinet adviser became convinced, and recom- 
mended the name strongly to the President, — though 
not without a caution to the applicant that local 
influences were likely to rule New England men out. 
And so it proved; for the President sent in to the 
Senate the list of commissioners with a North Carolina 
man for the third place. 

The year 1870 proved a notable one in our author's 
chronology. In sjDring he argued and won the 
Hosmer case in the Supreme Court; and in June, 
simultaneously with his defeat at Washington for 
the codifying commission, his first law-book was 
issued from the press in Boston, which showed that 
his professional skill with the pen needed to be taken 
on trust no longer. Both from the felicitous mode of 
treatment and the choice of a subject — for, through 
all the changes of our family law, no comprehensive 
text-book of the kind had been in the market for 
forty years, — Schouler's "Domestic Relations" at 
once took possession of the legal field, and through 
five large editions has securely occupied it ever since. 
Reviewers both English and American at once wel- 
comed it, and praised its clear, accurate, and logical 
expression, its superior literary style, and a certain 
freshness of treatment, after the deductive fashion, 
Avhich set the law forth as la^vyers had not clearly 
understood it before. So far as a portly volume of 
the kind may be thought capable, it has brought to 
the author solid fame and profit. And on its aj^pear- 
ance one Boston reviewer mentioned it as something 
of an event that a book showing such maturity of 



BIOGRAPHY. 275 

continuous power had been written by a lawyer 
hardly thirty years old. 

Nor had Schouler's intimate friends failed to 
observe that this law of the household was the work 
not only of a young man, but of a young bachelor. 
For such a subject, notmthstanding, he had quali- 
fied liimself to write by a profound thought and expe- 
rience quite unusual. His intuitions were delicate, 
and his moral sense tested the family relation in all 
of its vicissitudes. He had in fact been familiar as 
an own son in other households which bore trials 
besides his own. With women and children our 
author's gentle nature always found ready expres- 
sion; he has interpreted them and gained their 
peculiar love without apparent effort; and so, too, 
upon men and women much his seniors, he seems, by 
our narrative, to have impressed himself more readily 
than upon his equals in age. Many a woman, of one 
social grade or another, has confided in him her 
secret, and been set on the right road rejoicing ; for 
in confidences he is honorable. He in return, as he 
has frequently confessed, owes more and more in life 
to woman's sympathy; for men are apt to be coarse 
or unfeeling towards a fellow-man's infirmity. 

It is not strange, then, that a man like this was 
thought to have had some unusual experience with 
the fair sex, — some early romantic attachment or dis- 
appointment. Upon all such points our author pre- 
serves the closest reticence, except to say that he 
was never engaged in his life save to the woman 
he married. But when Du INIaurier's two novels 
were discussed not long ago in his j)resence, he 
expressed liis strong preference for " Peter Ibbetson, " 
and pronounced it a striking psj-chological study. 
"Love," he remarked, "has immense influence in 



276 BIOGRAPHY. 

shaping tlie character and course of one's life; and 
so, too, have the illusions of love." On the 14th of 
i December, 1870, our young author married Emily 
' Fuller, the only child by a first marriage of Asa F. 
Cochran, a respected merchant of Boston and New 
Orleans. She had been long a family friend ; and the 
match, which mutual acquaintances at once pro- 
nounced most sensible, proved also a most happy 
one. With quiet refinement, good housekeeping 
traits, and good judgment, the wife has aided her 
husband in working out his most cherished plans of 
life ; and so constant and intimate since marriage has 
been their personal companionship, that they have 
rarely had occasion to correspond by letter. One 
obvious advantage of this alliance has been in the 
opportunity it gave our author to pui'sue unremunera- 
tive work without tempting liim to ease or idleness. 

James Schouler brought his mfe to Washington 
City to enjoy the social pleasures of a winter season; 
and their first summer was passed at the White 
Mountains. For serious work, he began the new 
year, 1871, with the first issue of a law periodical 
at the national capital, styled the "United States 
Jurist;" an enterprise upon which he concentrated 
his energy as editor during the next three years, in 
connection with a new law-book on " Personal Prop- 
erty," which he presently contracted to write for his 
Boston pul^lishers. Issued in the name of a law- 
publishing firm, in Washington, at tliis time pros- 
perous and eminent, the "Jurist" was in reality the 
project of its editor and controlling owner; whose 
experiment was to supply a magazine for the American 
bar of a national cast, an exponent of the best thought 
and intelligence for diffusion among the legal pro- 
fession of the whole country. Had this experiment 



BIOGRAPHY. 277 

proved a full financial success, Schouler would prob- 
ably have lived in Washington and confined himself 
to legal literature and professional pursuits for the 
rest of his life. He had already become fully aware 
that the pen must be the chief resource of his future 
fame and usefulness; for his deafness still increased, 
and the ticking of the watch by which he had for 
several years tested his daily hearing ceased to be 
heard at all at either ear the fu'st summer he lived in 
Washington. 

General Schouler plied his own pen busily at the 
Boston office during the interval of clients. In 1871, 
besides finishing the second volume of his war history, 
he wrote a series of "Political and Personal Recol- 
lections " for the "Boston Journal," — articles of 
great merit, which, if culled in extracts, would make 
an entertaining book. But their irregular publica- 
tion depressed him ; and often did he yearn for the 
control of some weekly paper, rustic and homespun, 
which in some quiet town he might edit and improve. 
"I would rather," he writes his son, "have charge 
of a well-established weekly paper than be a field- 
marshal. That is all I am fit for; and then I could 
spin out my ' Recollections ' as easily and pleasantly 
as a spider does a web." In other moods, he longed 
for a restful change, and to see old Scotland once 
more ; in fact, he needed recreation greatly, and the 
consulate of Glasgow had been the unrealized dream 
of ten years. One, however, who dwells upon his 
reminiscences has ceased to belong to the present*, 
and for any political appointment he was too much 
out of touch with the national politics that ruled the 
hour. But his pecuniary affairs gained steadily; and 
when in October his last promissory note was taken 



278 BIOGRAPHY. 

up at the bank, "I shall henceforth," he said, "keep 
my hands from signmg and borrowing as I always 
have done from picking and stealing." 

When the new year 1872 began, General Schouler 
retired from his office partnersliip upon an annuity 
whose terms included his wife and daughters ; at the 
same time retaining certain interests in a firm which 
once more aimed to be purely professional. His son 
John was a party to this arrangement; and both the 
brothers, while wishing their father to enjoy the rest 
he needed, urged him to devote his remaining activity 
to the third volume of his History, for which the 
public was waiting; or, if he did more than this, to 
prepare a second series of his "Recollections," wliich 
had not as yet extended beyond the Whig era. But 
his first leisure at home he gave to sorting out and 
arranging the large correspondence of his life; and 
then came the summons of the Presidential campaign 
of this year, which stirred him like a trumpet's call. 
Joining once more the independents who called for 
magnanimity to the South and uncorrupt administra- 
tion, he was placed as a Presidential elector on the 
liberal Republican ticket of his district. When at 
Cambridge, during early autumn, and speaking in 
the open air, at one of these political meetings, he 
took a severe cold, and was soon confined to his 
chamber in consequence. His disease, an affection 
of the heart and liver, assumed presently a dangerous 
t}"pe. The doctors who were called for consultation 
told him, as requested, his exact condition; and 
when they informed him that he had but a few days 
to live, he met the announcement with fortitude and 
resignation. Conscious to the last, he now took 
leave of family and personal friends with a cheering 
and affectionate word to each. His wife and sisters 



BIOGRAPHY. 279 

attended the sick chamber devotedly, and all of his 
children were present except John, the naval officer, 
who arrived from his station at Key West too late, 
and to whom the father dictated a farewell letter. 
Strong in the Christian faith, our hero gave himself 
humbly as a child to eternity, and his soul ebbed 
gently out from its mortal frame like a receding tide. 
General Schouler died on the 24th of October, 1872. 
His funeral was simple as he wished it, and the pomp 
of a military funeral tendered by the State was 
declined. Family, relatives, neighbors, and personal 
friends thronged the little Episcopal church at 
Jamaica Plain without ceremony ; and the two vener- 
able pastors of his early manhood, whom we have 
mentioned, conducted the services, after which his 
remains were borne to Forest Hills Cemetery, their 
last resting-place. 

" No one who ever really knew him could harbor a 
feeling of enmity;" "Few men, with such decided 
opinions, had fewer personal enemies,"' — such were 
the spontaneous public expressions which recalled 
General Schouler's genuine goodness and the many 
liigh and noble qualities of his character. In Boston 
a movement, organized soon after his death, resulted 
in the erection of a handsome monument at Forest 
Hills, to wliich friends, high and low, and men of all 
politics subscribed; the first donation of all coming 
from Boston's leading lady of society, Mrs. Harrison 
Gray Otis, who feelingly expressed her sense of the 
manifold virtues which had impressed her while in 
constant communication with him on behalf of the 
women workers of Boston during the whole Civil 
War. Upon this monument, chaste in its whole 
detail, is chiselled a fair medallion profile of the 
adjutant-general's face, with its regular Scotch feat- 



280 BIOGRAPHY. 

ures.^ He was a very handsome and striking man, 
especially when in full militaiy uniform; being 
six feet or more in height, well proportioned, and 
wearing a becoming dignity on serious occasions, 
though ready at most other times to beam out with 
friendliness and good-nature. He was a genial and 
engaging man ; a good story-teller, with a great and 
varied fund of personal experience among interesting 
men and events to draw upon; a well-read and com- 
panionable man for any social gathering, since all 
human nature interested him. If he ever came short 
of full social expression, it was chiefly from mod- 
est pride and the consciousness of a penury which 
chilled his generous impulses and made him feel 
most nearly allied to the poor and humble. And 
yet, under liis son's skilful management, — what with 
his literary property and his share in fees of the 
Hosmer claims, which were now being paid, — he left 
at his death an estate more nearly approaching afflu- 
ence than he had possessed during most of his life. 
Entering quite early upon manhood's responsibilities, 
he acquired a maturity of expression which perhaps 
was heightened by wearing English side-whiskers; 
yet he was but fifty-seven years old when he died. 

Though foreign-born, William Schouler loved 
Massachusetts to the core, and knew well its people, 
civic or rural. In last years his heart recalled many 
of liis earlier friendships; he revisited Marshfield 

1 It is to be regretted that there is neither statue nor oil painting 
of General William Schouler, as he was familiarly seen and remem- 
bered ; but some excellent photographs, which were taken during the 
Civil War and later, are still preserved by his children. An oil paint- 
ing by the celebrated artist Alexander, now owned in the family, was 
made when Schouler was quite a young man ; and tradition says that 
the likeness is excellent ; but there is little about the picture that his 
children or the later public can recognize. 



BIOGRAPHY. 281 

and the Webster family, and the grave of their 
immortal ancestor; nor did the casual coincidence 
escape comment at his funeral that he died on the 
twentieth anniversary of the death of his first great 
civil leader. But, with impulses that always warmly 
responded to the highest ideals of public duty, he to 
the last revered in memory John A. Andrew above 
all others. It was his dying wish that the Execu- 
tive Order, which recognized his associated service 
to the Commonwealth,^ should be graven upon his 
monument ; and among his private papers, after death, 
that order, as transmitted to him, was found care- 
fully preserved, together with its original draft in 
Governor Andrew's own handwriting. 



VIII. 

1873-1896. 

The death of husband and father was the first 
great bereavement of the household we have described ; 
and, oppressed with grief, James Schouler prepared, 
on his return to Washington soon after the funeral, 
to detach the strand of two closely interwoven lives 
which death had separated, and, at the age of thirty- 
three, to adjust his own career to new conditions. 
With the inducement of an important trust from his 
maternal uncle, he presently decided to give up his 
Washington connections and make Boston once more 
the centre of such professional activity as remained 
to him. Fate herself seemed to close the portal 
upon the past, for very soon after General Schouler's 

1 See supra, p. 266. 



282 BIOGRAPHY. 

funeral came the great fire in Boston ; and its flames, 
in their devastating progress, licked up and levelled 
the solid granite building in Kilby Street where their 
office was situated, consuming the father's desk wdth 
its contents and his own, and all the old papei-s and 
vouchers in fact of liis prior professional life. 

The winter of 1873-74 saw a last family reunion 
at West Roxbury, while James settled finally his 
father's estate; and in the spring of 1874 his wife 
and younger sister went to Germany, where he joined 
them for a summer tour through northern Italy, 
Switzerland, and France. This was a first and 
delightful experience abroad for all of them; and, 
returning in the fall of that year, they prepared for 
housekeeping in Boston apartments, where the 
mother. General Schouler's widow, was soon to join 
them. But while she visited in the meantime her 
son William in Syracuse, her delicate frame suc- 
cumbed to pneumonia, and she died there, after a 
brief illness, on the 1st of November, 1874. James 
had just time, when summoned, to hasten to her 
bedside and receive her smile of recognition before 
she expired. Her remains were laid by the side of 
the illustrious husband who had owed immeasurably 
to her devotion; and upon her gravestone it is fitly 
inscribed that "her children arise up and call her 
blessed." 

Not long after this full orplianage of the children, 
sons and daughters settled each in separate homes, 
affectionate still through life, and mindful of the lov- 
ing and tender influences which had brought them 
up united. William, married previously in 1871 to 
Sophia B. Heaton of Brooklyn, has served for many 
years as faithful rector of the Episcopal Church at 
Elkton, Maryland; John, who in 1881 married Hope 



BIOGRAPHY. 283 

Day of Catskill, has risen honorably through succes- 
sive grades in his naval profession, and with a high 
rank in the active list of commanders, serves at 
present as executive officer on the flag-ship of our 
North Atlantic squadron; Harriet, now a widow, 
married in 1875 the Rev. Nathaniel G. Allen of 
Boston, an Episcopal clergyman; and Fanny, who 
was united in 1880 to James H. Williams, a pros- 
perous banker in Bellows Falls, Vermont, died in 
1891. Among the marriages of General Schouler's 
five sons and daughters, those of James and John 
have borne no offspring. 

As incidental to his withdrawal from the national 
capital, — a city just emerging from a grub or 
chrysalis condition into its modern splendor, and 
fascinating him greatly with its warm friendships and 
cordial social life, — our young author regretfully 
abandoned the experiment of his " United States 
Jurist," whose last quarterly number was issued for 
October, 1873. The circulation and influence of 
this jDeriodical had steadily increased, but not rapidly 
enough to warrant him in expending upon it longer 
both capital and brain- work. During the tliree years 
of its existence under his editorial direction, a large 
share of its material was from his own pen and those 
of his two Boston partners; but among voluntary 
contributors who encouraged the enterprise were 
lawyers of renown, like Justice Miller of the Supreme 
Bench, Professor Emory Washburn of Cambridge, 
William Beach Lawrence, and, chief among all edito- 
rial friends, the versatile John William Wallace, re- 
porter of the Supreme Court decisions and President 
of the Pennsylvania Historical Society. — a warm- 
hearted man whose thoughtful attentions, once begun, 



284 BIOGRAPHY. 

ceased only with his life. With reference to James 
Schouler's retirement in 1873 appeared an article in 
a Philadelphia paper from the pen doubtless of this 
last-named gentleman, from wliich the following is 
an extract : " We regret this retirement because we 
have thought that we could see in the ' United States 
Jurist, ' of which Mr. Schouler was the founder and 
sole conductor, the more than seminal principle of 
a thoroughly independent and valuable law journal. 
It began with no flourish of trumpets and no external 
exhibitions, perhaps rather unimpressively. But we 
early observed in it the marks of an original, fearless, 
and thoughtful editorship; and of a pen guided at 
once by high legal attainments and a very careful 
consideration and analysis of every subject which it 
passed upon." 

Two incidents, one pleasant and one unpleasant, 
are still remembered in the annals of this youthful 
lucubration. The pleasant one relates to the famous 
New York advocate, Charles O' Conor, by tliis time 
an elderly man, who was an early subscriber to the 
"Jurist," and liked it so well that, when renewing 
his subscription, in 1872, he paid for five years in 
advance. When the magazine was discontinued, a 
check to refund the proper balance was sent to him ; 
but he never transmitted it through the bank for pay- 
ment ; meaning apparently to signify that the amount 
might stand as his donation towards the concern. 
The unpleasant incident relates to a change in 
methods of legal instruction which began at the 
Harvard Law School while the "Jurist" was pub- 
lished. Mr. Schouler had made " book reviews " a 
special feature of his magazine, giving full lists of 
new law-books and preparing notices, whether edito- 
rial copies were sent him or not. In reviewing two 



BIOGRAPHY. 285 

volumes of "Selected Cases," issued upon the new 
method, he took issue wiih the "American Law 
Review" concerning their merits as compared with 
legal text-books; writing boldly, and even sharply, 
under a loyal warmth to some of Harvard's former 
professors — though he had never attended personally 
any law school whatever for his own instruction — 
and for vindicating a class of legal writers among 
' whom he belonged, and who seemed marked for dis- 
' paragement ; but otherwise without personal bias 
against any one. But he soon found to his surprise 
that he had given offence in other high quarters of 
his University, on an issue which he had supposed 
interested men of the legal profession alone; and 
chiefly for that reason he resigned in 1873 the class 
secretaryship which he had held with the favor and 
confidence of his classmates for eight years. 

Boston now becomes once more the regular seat of 
Mr. Schouler's professional labors in a quiet routine, 
for the next twenty years or more, which was chiefly 
varied by brief winter excursions to Washington and 
a summer life among the mountains. Abandoning, 
as hard destiny compelled him, all further ambition 
of forensic triumphs, and of course cutting loose from 
war claims, he adjusted his professional work to the 
standard of chamber practice, chiefly concerning him- 
self for the future with the settlement and care of 
estates in probate. When in 1875 new and commo- 
dious buildings went up in the burnt Boston district, 
he moved into one of them near the new post-oflice, 
and 60 Congress Street still remains his most con- 
venient mail address, wherever he may personally 
be. And by that time dissolving all partnership 
relations, he retained Mr. Motte still as a constant 



286 BIOGRAPHY. 

office neighbor and companion. Thus located in 
his own business, Mr. Schouler steadily pm-sued his 
literary plans, under succeeding contracts with his 
publishers. 

Of his well-known law treatises which followed 
"Domestic Relations," the first volume of "Personal 
Property " was issued while he tarried in Washington 
in 1872; and the latter subject of investigation 
opened so broad a field of legal study that a second 
volume (chiefly upon " Gifts and Sales ") followed in 
1876; a third on "Bailments including Carriers " in 
1880; "Executors and Administrators" in 1883; 
and "Wills" in 1887. "Husband and Wife," an 
expansion of "Domestic Relations," went through 
the press in 1882. Six of these seven volumes have 
sold rapidly, passing into new editions which have 
cost much editorial labor in bringing the court devel- 
opment of decisions down to date ; but with each new 
edition carefully revised and improved by the author's 
personal labor. This author's law-books have long 
had a wide national reputation ; they are recognized 
in the courts as standard authorities on the various 
subjects treated ; and written, as they are, in a clear, 
lucid style, applying sound judgment with a wealth 
of learning, these books serve well the use of law- 
students or of the practising lawyer who wishes to 
freshen himself upon elementary principles. Besides 
these creative labors, Mr. Schouler edited "Story 
on Bailments " soon after his return to Boston ; and 
while doing so perceived that simpler principle of 
classification which he applied afterwards to his own 
work on the subject, and which, as taught since in 
good law schools, is rapidly superseding the nomen- 
clature of Lord Holt and the writers who followed 
his primitive exposition of the subject. Our author 



BIOGRAPHY. 287 

bore also an important part in the preparation of 
"Myers' Federal Decisions," and has contributed 
various articles to English and American law maga- 
zines, most of wliich relate to professional studies in 
connection with his own text-books. Under the 
pressure of other important work to be presently 
mentioned, he has firmly declined of late years to 
take up new professional subjects, though receiving 
tempting offers from law publishers in all our leading 
cities; and, in fact, feeling the need of curtailing 
such labors, he cancelled six years ago a contract for 
a new legal text-book which he had already entered 
into. 

But Mr. Schouler is far more widely and popularly 
known by his historical work than by these purely 
professional productions. His successful occupation 
of this second field furnishes quite a remarkable 
instance of versatile literary industry ; for while most 
historians have found historical subjects grave enough 
to absorb their most serious study, he, to quote his 
own words, made history " the diversion from literary 
toil more dull and mechanical, — in other words, a 
literary lawyer's recreation." From our famous 
Presidential campaign of 1860, which, as we have 
seen, intensely interested him just as he had reached 
majority, our author's early diaries exhibit him as 
exploring with enthusiasm American politics and the 
writings of our early statesmen in the midst of his 
vigorous preparations for the bar. Soon after return- 
ing from the seat of war he made a minute sketch of 
Massachusetts colonial history in a picturesque paper 
entitled "Sir Henry Vane, Governor," which was 
sent to the "Atlantic Monthly," but returned to liim 
rejected. That essay has long since disajopeared from 



288 BIOGRAPHY. 

the author's manuscripts; but in his diary, of Novem- 
ber, 1864, he wrote soon after his rebuff: "I shall 
now betake myself in earnest to my historical studies, 
with a view of writing in time some book on our con- 
stitutional history, — an idea which I have secretly 
cherished a twelvemonth or more." In 1866 he pre- 
pared from an original study of the State department 
volumes an article upon " Our Diplomacy during the 
Rebellion," which was published in the "North 
American Review ; " it drew from Secretecry Seward 
himself an autograph letter which to our young author 
was a great encouragement. Pursuing these diplo- 
matic studies later to the final tragedy of " Maximilian 
in Mexico," after the French had been forced to 
withdraw, he wrote another magazine article on 
that subject; but this failed once more of accep- 
tance. Notwithstanding these literary discourage- 
ments, Schouler pursued the consecutive national 
studies which he had already taken up in earnest; 
and even while composing his " Domestic Relations " 
at Washington he was examining with interest the 
memorable sites about him and making comprehen- 
sive notes of the writings "of Washington, Madison, 
Hamilton, and Jefferson during the era which next 
succeeded our American revolution. His wish, now 
cherished, was to begin his narrative where the 
venerable George Bancroft had seemingly laid down 
his pen, and be the recognized historian to supply the 
connecting link between our American Revolution 
and the Civil War. He knew of no other scholar, 
native or foreign, who had projected such a work. 
Indeed, during the very same year (1870) that his 
fu'st law-book, the "Domestic Relations," was pub- 
lished, we find that he completed the first draft of an 
introductory chapter to such a history, and then laid 



BIOGRAPHY. 289 

the manuscript aside for the " United States Jurist, " 
thinking to concentrate his talents upon law litera- 
ture 1 for the rest of his life. All was encouraging 
and hopeful here ; but as to literary fame and useful- 
ness outside of the law nearly all was discouragement. 

After the " Jurist " experiment had been abandoned 
in 1873 Schouler took up once more in earnest the 
suspended project of writing a United States history. 
His Boston law publishers, whose range of general 
literature was extensive, were well disposed to sus- 
tain the venture ; but as publishers already of George 
Bancroft, whose future literary plans were uncertain, 
they felt themselves unable to decide at once in his 
favor, and counselled delay. Their suspense con- 
tinued thus for years; in early 1879 the author 
made proposals to another leading Boston firm which 
declined to assume his undertaking; and dreading 
the ordeal of publishers elsewhere, strangers to him, 
with a bulk of manuscript which must be finished 
before being considered at all, he went at once to 
his former "Jurist" publishers at Washington, the 
Morrisons, and found them glad enough to stand 
sponsors for the history under a most liberal publish- 
ing contract. With this spur to exertion, he now 
completed his composition of the first two volumes, 
and they went forth to the world. 

This publishing connection did not prove alto- 
gether advantageous for bringing such a work into 
notice ; and, to add to the author's chagrin, his Boston 
law publishers. Little, Brown & Co., announced 
themselves at final liberty to take up the history 
just when it was too late. One of the Morrison 
brothers died soon after the first volume was pub- 

1 See author's origiual preface to History of the United States, 
vol. i. 

19 



290 BIOGRAPHY. 

lished; and the survivor, thoiigli fairly fulfilling 
to the best of his ability, was hampered in pushing 
the work as it deserved. At the same time he held 
tenaciously to his contract rights until other embar- 
rassments forced him by 1890 to sell out, shortly 
after the fourth volume was issued. From among 
various large firms in the great cities who were now 
ready to assume publication, the author chose Dodd, 
Mead & Co., of New York, whose services had been 
tendered him for years, upon their own discovery of 
the merits of his undertaking; and this choice he has 
never regretted. 

Parallel with his legal text-books, the " History of 
the United States, under the Constitution," in five 
volumes, was prepared and issued by our author, 
as follows: volume i. ("Rule of Federalism," 1789- 
1801) in 1880; volume ii. ("Jefferson Republicans," 
1801-17) in 1882; volume iii. ("Era of Good Feel- 
ing," 1817-31) in 1885; volume iv. ("Whigs and 
Democrats," 1831-47) in 1889; volume v. ("Free- 
Soil Controversy," 1847-61) in 1891. After this 
completion of the extensive narrative under his 
original plan. Dr. Schouler next gave his personal 
attention to a revised edition of the whole work 
which comprised nearly three thousand pages; he 
made entirely new plates for the first two volumes, 
which he largely re-wrote; and here liis facile pen 
has rested. A life of " Thomas Jefferson " by our 
author in the " Makers of America Series " deserves 
a favorable mention. 

In recalling those ten earlier years of anxious 
authorship and depression, while the merits of his 
monumental work gained with the public but gradual 
recognition, and there was little business energy or 
advertising to bring the work forward while it stole 



BIOGRAPHY. 291 

into scholarly notice, our modest author loves to 
recall some of those influential men whose sponta- 
neous commendations cheered him onward in his 
task. There was George Bancroft, first of all, who 
had at length concluded to leave the field open; the 
late Alexander Johnston, an American historical 
professor and scholar of great promise, who wrote the 
first strongly laudatory notice of the earliest volume 
and inserted it in the New York "Nation; " the cul- 
tured George William Curtis; John Austin Stevens 
of the "Magazine of American History;" Samuel 
Eliot of Boston, Professors Mac Vane of Harvard, 
Sumner of Yale, and Herbert B. Adams and Jameson 
of the Jolms Hopkins, together with the President 
of this latter institution. Most of these gentlemen 
signified their appreciation by personal correspondence 
and in other ways; and some writers for the press, 
whose names are unknown, deserve also a mention. 
In the course of fifteen years many gratifying letters 
have come to the author from characteristic though 
less distinguished readers: one, for instance, from 
an old Baptist minister in the Rocky Mountain 
region, who says that the only change of words he 
could wish in the whole work would be to call the 
Mormons " rascals ; " and another, which came a few 
weeks since from the managing editor of a large 
Philadelphia newspaper, who expresses his grateful 
pleasure after a " fourth perusal " of the five volumes. 
"There are many persons," observes our liistorian, 
"who will flatter you to your bent after a cursory 
glance at what you have solidly written; but when 
you find one who has read from cover to cover and 
then praises, you may feel that he is your friend." 

We shall not here undertake to cull from tes- 
timonials to the merits of Schouler's masterly work 



292 BIOGRAPHY. 

which are contained in the publisher's portly circulars ; 
but we borrow from two tributes only which have 
reached the author within the past twelve months, 
and of which the publishers have taken no cogni- 
zance. The first is from a personal letter written by 
the kindly and accomplished President Gilman of the 
Johns Hopkins University : " You have won unique 
distinction, not likely, I think, to be taken from you 
by subsequent investigators. The sense of proi3ortion 
which has governed your work is valuable ; but the 
candor and fairness and justice which you manifest, 
in the discussion of critical periods and of influential 
characters, give it even higher importance." The 
second we quote from an article which appeared in 
a New England weekly from the pen of a good 
literary scholar and clergyman in an article devoted 
to a comparative estimate of American historians now 
living: "Mr. Schouler's work is, without question, 
the most complete picture of the nation from its 
founding to the Civil War. It is a rapid, straight- 
forward narrative, seldom stopping to quote authori- 
ties, but accurate in facts, and possessed of the 
highest historical genius. The narrative flows on, 
when well under way, with a marvellous richness and 
eloquence, midway between the general and the par- 
ticular, the narrative and the philosophic methods. 
As an authority, it is going to stand prominent. 
But what it is to be most valued for is the fact that 
the author is possessed of a vast synthetic power: a 
real economic and political philosophy makes the 
facts he relates bear their true relative position and 
force. There are instances of special pleading as he 
reaches periods near his own, and these are to be 
regretted; but, on the whole, Mr. Schouler has 
given us a brilliant, vigorous, strong, pithy, stimu- 



BIOGRAPHY, 293 

lating history. He is never tempted to turn aside to 
lengthy, disproportionate disquisition, but holds his 
subject and himself marvellously well in hand. He 
is a condensed, pruned Macaulay." 

While thus occupied with a twofold sedentary task 
which must naturally have increased in tendency his 
social exclusion while broadening his literary fame, 
Mr. Schouler received quite unexpectedly an invita- 
tion which opened to him a new field of usefulness 
most welcome and oj^portune. Judge Edmund H. 
Bennett, a man of kindred tastes and experience in 
legal composition, offered him in the summer of 1883 
the post of lecturer on "Bailments," which had just 
become vacant, at the new Law School of Boston 
University, of which he was Dean. The place was 
provisionally accepted by our author; and, standing 
before a class of young men to expound a subject 
already familiar to him, he found himself at once 
among fresh and highly congenial surroundings. 
"The boys like you," said the judicious dean after 
the first lecture had concluded; and he added 
" Domestic Relations " to the new lecturer's subjects, 
and made his engagement permanent upon the Boston 
University staff. 

With this advantageous start as a professional 
instructor and lecturer, Mr. Schouler found by 1886 
a similar position for a few weeks' employment each 
year at the National University Law School at 
Washington, with which the famous Justice Miller 
and a strong personal friend of the author at the dis- 
trict bar were already connected. Annual excursions 
to Washington, such as he had already been taking 
for historical stud}^ found henceforth a new motive ; 
and a few weeks of leisure still remaininof to him in 



294 BIOGRAPHY. 

midwinter and the early spring, application was next 
made in 1889 by friends on his behalf at the famous 
Law School of Columbia College, New York, where 
new courses of instruction were to be established. 
The veteran Professor Dwight, founder and head of 
that school, gave, after full inquiiy, his written pledge 
to send Mr. Schouler's name to the trustees, which 
was thought to be a virtual appointment; he failed, 
however, to do so, and possibly a schism in the school 
over modes of instruction which followed simulta- 
neously with Professor Dwight's retirement, in the 
summer of 1890, may explain a mysterious change of 
mind. Scarcely, however, had our author rallied 
from his disappointment in that quarter, when an 
unexpected offer came from his friend. Professor 
Herbert B. Adams, and the historical department of 
Johns Hopkins University, before the year ended, 
which has led to the happiest possible consummation 
of his annual work in University instruction. All 
these staff positions as lecturer our author has since 
steadily retained, increasing in each instance the 
extent of the courses for which he was originally 
engaged, and serving to supplement his labors with 
the pen. 

As a lecturer, Professor Schouler shows most of 
the qualities which marked him for high forensic 
promise in his younger days, — an attractive person, 
an impressive manner, good delivery, and a musical 
voice, earnest in its deeper utterances. Sedate and 
moderate, as befits a class instructor, and rather 
inclining to simple and natural exposition, and yet 
always full of his subject and at times rapid and 
vehement when kindled in demonstration, he arrests 
the attention of his audience and holds it securely 
till his appointed hour ends. His dignified alertness 



BIOGRAPHY. 295 

checks all indecorum ; but applause follows an occa- 
sional sally or stirring expression. No lecturer could 
ask for more attentive listeners. Sometimes he turns 
aside for a comment upon the general aspects of life, 
and the close of each course supplies usually some 
eloquent exordium which brings the students to his 
desk for a last grasp of the hand ; but for the most 
part he keeps closely to his immediate subject, devel- 
oping the law or narrative just as he had investigated, 
and with his constant sense of proportion, and making 
each lecture reach a certain stage or climax. Lead- 
ing principles are thus elucidated, and their limita- 
tions clearly defined, "with apt and ample illustrations 
not only from reports, but from daily life besides ; a 
constant object with him being to encourage the 
student to observe with his own eyes among daily 
circumstances where and how a legal principle should 
apply. He cannot, of course, conduct an oral quiz ; 
but students accost him before or after the lecture 
with points of inquiry ; and wherever they may find 
him, he makes himself as helpful to his pupils as 
possible. Written examinations have attested the 
practical value of the instruction he annually imparts. 
He does not write out his lectures at length; but, 
saturated with his subject, he prepares a mere skele- 
ton sheet or brief for his convenience, having ready 
at his left hand a small package of slips for such 
special reference or quotation during the hour as 
convenience may suggest. An impressive thought 
or illustration gets thus woven specially into his 
routine exposition; and often does an idea worth 
inculcating from the platform occur to him as he 
walks to or from the lecture-room. For nothing can 
go wholly by rote with so systematic a thinker, who 
brings all knowledge to bear upon immediate action 



296 BIOGRAPHY. 

and events. This fresh contact with young men is 
to the author himself a well of inspiration. There is 
not too much of it to tire the brain; and he agrees 
with a writer who once observed: "I have learned 
much from my teachers, more from my equals, but 
most from my pupils." 

Allusion is made in some of the foregoing essays 
to our author's habits of literary work and to his 
general methods of study and composition. ^ Orderly 
arrangement and the economy of time are traits 
strongly characteristic of him from early youth. He 
originated by experience his own routine of life; and 
his early diaries show how incessant was his mental 
training from the time he left college until he became 
a recognized scholar and writer. A " perambulation 
book" is repeatedly mentioned in his journals, which 
he carried in his pocket on his daily walk, with catch- 
words and cues to refresh the memory of studies as 
he repeated them aloud. Another book which he 
kept, such as young students are more familiar with, 
was the "common-place book; " of which three neat 
volumes are still preserved, covering the first twenty 
years of his majority, and traversing a -wide field of 
general reading, prose and poetic, grave and gay, 
solid and imaginative, from Aristotle to Mark Twain. 
On the whole, however, these volumes show the 
special bent of his mind to American history and 
statesmanship; they are concise rather than elabo- 
rate; and, not to be too much harassed by either 
diary or common-place book in his productive man- 
hood, he contrived, when about forty, a fair single 
substitute for them both. This was the use of long 
envelopes of pasteboard or stiff paper marked for 

1 See pages 40, 58. 



BIOGRAPHY. 297 

each succeeding calendar year. Upon prepared slips, 
about the size of an ordinary bank check, he would 
enter quotations from his reading, or the rough 
thoughts or comments that might be wrought out for 
some further occasion, or else some casual diary de- 
scription worthy of his later reference ; all such slips, 
wherever written, went into the envelope of the year; 
and it was easy to add to the same collection a contem- 
porary newspaper cutting or printed circular worth 
recalling. All this served the stead of a blank-book. 
Out of a year's envelope the contents might be 
poured upon a table at any time and read over or 
separated as his immediate convenience required. 
For lecture purposes the author has kept special and 
appropriate "scrap envelopes" of this character. 

"Method," observes our author, "and frugality of 
time should be handmaids of all intellectual industry 
which involves considerable pains and study. And 
especially in that general range of reading which 
every accomplished scholar needs to liberalize his 
special researches, the pen-work should be econo- 
mized. It is lost labor to carry in volumes of manu- 
script what ought to be imbedded in the brain ; for 
after all the note-book is mainly for re\dew, for exact 
statement, and to aid the mind later in its own ener- 
gizing. A famous scholar has well said that what is 
twice read is easier remembered than what is once 
transcribed; and it is my own experience that by 
jotting down in pencil, while one reads, either on a 
marker or a fly-leaf, the number of each page which 
contains a striking thought, and then recurring to 
those pages after the volume has been finished, a 
second perusal may confirm sufficiently the mental 
impression. And as for those extensive common- 
place books with topical index, which we see exposed 



298 BIOGRAPHY. 

for sale, I cannot conceive of any productive writer 
going far with it; for all such self-imposed tasks 
when considerable suit only a literary novice, or the 
man of leisure and superficial culture who seeks to 
entertain his friends agreeably. Of the mind, and of 
memory itself, prodigious feats have been recorded, 
as to some illustrious scholars, which I am warj^ of 
believing. The average player of a stock company 
shows you, to be sure, how greatly the mere memory 
may be strengthened by exercise; but the memory an 
intellectual man wishes is that which puts what 
others have said to the vital nutriment of his own 
thoughts. I would rather have a good selecting 
memory than an omnivorous memory (if such there 
be) which holds everything and can fetch on demand. 
One intellectual mind draws one thought, and 
another mind another, from the same great predeces- 
sor; and it must often be a trick of playing off the 
particular thing that haunted one's memory from 
association, like an oil portrait that hapj)ens to hang 
over the mantelpiece, which imposed on credulous 
admirers the belief so often expressed that everything 
was remembered by that individual." 

Thus occupied during the last quarter of a century, 
our author has made Boston his place of residence; 
living the hotel life, at the Boylston, the Evans, the 
Brunswick, successively, with his wife, the sole com- 
panion of his home, while using his own quiet office 
as his literary work-shop. Bright and cheerful situa- 
tions, with sun and air and glimpses of green, and 
yet close to the main arteries of city life, have always 
been their choice; and for six years or more they 
have occupied apartments at the Hotel Bristol, on a 
charming corner which commands the most famous 



BIOGRAPHY. 299 

residential square and the noblest architectural cluster 
of buildings of Boston, or perhaps of any American 
city. But Professor Schouler has passed many 
winter months in Washington, while busy over his 
history, "not so much for society," he expresses it, 
"as for study; " and for the last six years his lecture- 
work has occupied him there and in Baltimore for 
two winter months regularly. With old friends and 
new to thus revisit, two brothers resident in Maryland 
with their families, and a genial and hospitable society 
abounding in the region, these variations of a winter 
season's surroundings are always welcome to him, at 
the same time that his New England attachment 
remains sincere. "Boston is arida nutrix," he some- 
times says, "for such a one as myself; but the best 
reference libraries of the country are there at my 
command, and the best means of general recreation; 
and after all a real Bostonian can never feel so much 
at home in any other city." 

But Dr. Schouler's chief happiness is found at his 
summer home among the White Mountains, where, 
with liis wife, he spends some five months of every 
year, and where alone they have the freedom of 
housekeeping. Both enjoy a simple social life, and 
are great lovers of natural scenery. Boarding at 
"Intervale," a hamlet of famed North Conway, dur- 
ing the first three summers following their marriage, 
and returning thither after two more experimental 
seasons elsewhere, they fixed upon this enchanting 
region and the Wliite Mountains for a permanent 
summer residence. Our author purchased on the 
main road a disused pasture fringed with stately 
pines, and having a sloping and graceful knoll, near 
the road, which commands an enchanting view of the 
Presidential range through the trees ai^^ beyond the 



300 BIOGRAPHY. 

green valley; and here in 1878, next to the costly 
and extensive estate of Mr. Erastus B. Bigelow, 
inventor of the carpet loom, he built an appropriate 
summer villa ; setting the first example in the town 
of Conway and its mountain neighborhood of a pretty 
cottage, artistically planned, with fine natural sur- 
roundings, yet such as a city man of moderate means 
might build for his summer use. With a long and 
curving red roof sloping on each side to the cedar 
piazza posts, the plan of this colonial cottage origi- 
nated in the bright seaside home of our author's boy- 
hood in Boston's island ward, as memory reproduced 
it; and from each piazza looking northward and 
southward, as well as from every window of the little 
wooden house so admirably finished, some lovely 
mountain landscape feasts the eye with great variety. 
When this Schouler cottage was built, it stood some- 
what remote from the cluster of summer boarding- 
houses comprising Intervale ; but now quite a number 
of pretty villas adorn the landscape besides the noble 
Bigelow mansion, and the colony of summer cottagers 
has become a considerable one. No longer dependent 
upon North Conway for its mails, Intervale now 
boasts its own post-office, express, and telegraph, 
besides a junction railroad-station. 

Such have been the neighboring changes within 
less than twenty years, since our author chose the 
township of Conway as his dwelling-place for five 
months of the year; and in this neighborhood he is 
always happy, being well known and esteemed both 
by residents and the summer people, whose common 
interests he has done much to unite. He has been a 
liberal benefactor of the Public Library of North 
Conway, founded in 1887, and as its most active 
director from, the start, is still greatly depended upon 



BIOGRAPHY. 301 

for selecting and purchasing books, supervising the 
details of management, and engineering summer 
entertainments for its benefit. He is treasurer of the 
Episcopal Church in North Conway, and a leading 
member of its vestry. As a good churchman he 
serves, besides, during the winter season on the vestry 
of St. Paul's Church in Boston. Schouler's fondness 
for the mountains is shown in all his writings, which 
abound in felicitous images and metaphors from 
brook, forest, and pastoral studies; and many a 
striking passage of his history which sums up indi- 
vidual character, has he thought out while rambling 
among the pine woods or reclining solitary under a 
favorite tree with Moat Mountain's outline before his 
vision pencilled upon a blue sky. Moat is North 
Conway's appropriate sentinel. There is no moun- 
tain region of Europe or America which to him seems 
so closely blended with human nature in its essential 
moods as these supreme granite hills of New Hamp- 
shire, — neither too awful nor too commonplace for 
man's habitation; and as for this emerald gateway of 
the region wliich North Conway furnishes, so varied, 
he affirms, are its landscape enchantments within a 
radius of fifteen miles, that he contrives a new walk 
and a new ride for every season. In younger years 
he has travelled in every remote quarter and scaled 
almost every considerable peak of these White Moun- 
tains ; and he still enjoys a day's tramp through the 
level of the region better than any other recreation. 

Alternating thus in his external surroundings for 
different portions of the year, our author is enabled 
to freshen periodically his literary tasks. What 
many would find distracting in a change of scene is 
to him a positive help. Turning from law composi- 
tion to historical, he diversifies his labor still further 



302 BIOGRAPHY. 

by composing in one place and collecting important 
material in another. No weeks are more fruitful of 
historical composition than the earlier ones passed at 
his mountain home, before the hot season fairly sets 
in, with the summer-boarder crowd and his brief 
allowance of vacation ; for now there is no great refer- 
ence library to consult, but materials must have been 
already shaped and at hand. City life, on the other 
hand, offers the true opportunity for gathering all 
stores of special information, when composition flags ; 
and while at Boston he writes with the key turned in 
the morning quiet of his office, which is opened for 
business at noon hours only; or else composes in the 
quiet Athenseum or Bar Association Library, where 
such books as he may need for reference are close at 
hand. 

Steadiness and concentration have served liim well 
habitually in all these years ; for the whole pen- work 
which heavily tasks the brain is completed each day 
by noon. While in Boston, office business and corre- 
spondence come next in order, followed in the after- 
noon, perhaps, by lectures or some plodding literary 
task. Under no circumstances is the evening robbed 
by him of its needful rest and recreation to advance 
the creation of a book or essay; nor, unless some 
social engagement keeps him up longer, does he 
retire later than ten o'clock at night. An early riser 
throughout the winter months, he breakfasts about 
seven when in Boston or wherever else he may break- 
fast alone, and between eight and nine o'clock in the 
forenoon he is well immersed in the day's chief 
literary task. For a winter evening he enjoys with 
his wife an occasional theatrical performance, concert 
or opera, taking with him a small nickel trumpet 
that all may not go on as a pantomime ; quite rarely 



BIOGRAPHY. 303 

he ma}^ be seen in city club or society ; and, if spending 
tlie evening at home, he scans the latest magazines 
and liglit literature, often reading aloud to his wife, 
or takes a hand with friends at whist or euchre. In 
card-playing, as in all other games of recreation, he 
would rather play for pleasure than antagonism. 

Twenty years of such a routine life have been three 
times broken. In the winter of 1876-77 our author, 
with his wife, made a pleasure excursion at the 
South, visiting more especially Florida and Louisiana, 
and passing and repassing through Washington. 
That was the famous winter when the Presidential 
contest between Tilden and Hayes culminated in the 
electoral commission established by Congress, which 
declared the Republican candidate chosen; and upon 
the constitutional aspects of an "electoral count," as 
fu'st agitated with pretentious claims made on behalf 
of a President pro tern, of the senate, our author pre- 
pared and published an historical essay at liis own 
cost under the pseudonyme of "Jurist," and made 
free distribution of it among our members of Con- 
gress. He saw the rival and distracted State legisla- 
tures in session while at New Orleans, and, learning 
the sentiment of leading citizens there quite accu- 
rately, published it when passing through Washington 
on his return. In 1889, he visited Europe with his 
wife for a second time, and passed seven memorable 
months in the complete tour of Southern France, 
Italy, England, and Scotland, besides visiting the 
World's Exposition of that year at Paris. Usually 
in good health, he had broken down by over-work 
before starting on the voyage from New York, and a 
rheumatic affection which troubled him upon his 
travels settled fuially in the eyes, and compelled him 



304 BIOGRAPHY. 

at the age of fifty to resort for the first time to 
glasses. "My eyesiglit," says Dr. Schouler, "had 
been as acute, all these preceding years, as my hearing 
was dull, and I suffered undoubtedly in the end by 
my own imprudence in straining it; for, being bent 
upon a long holiday, I had labored so incessantly for 
six months to prepare for it, reading finely printed 
proofs by night in addition to my daily labors, that 
when vacation came, I stood in full need of it." The 
warning monition not to abuse nature's gifts came in 
good season; and, once more in normal health by the 
time he returned to work, our author took his lesson 
seriously to heart, as other literary workers should 
do. A third European journey by Gibraltar, the 
Mediterranean, and Genoa, in the spring of 1894, 
occupied him and his wife in traversing Southern 
Germany, the Rliine, Holland, and Belgium. 

Peculiar conditions of mature existence have 
caused, as one might say, the insensible formation 
of a rind over the author's common intercourse which 
those casually accosting him seldom penetrate ; a few 
pleasant words of greeting and common-place suffic- 
ing perhaps with such as find communication an 
effort and have nothing particular to impart. With 
such he finds it most natural to lead by asking his 
own questions and receiving replies. The poet's 
lines seem often to apply to one who, like Dr. Schouler, 
never forces nor monopolizes a conversation : — 

"The hest of thoughts that he hath kuown 
For lack of listeners is nusaid." 

But it is very different in the home circle, or with 
S3ni[ipathetic acquaintances, who can take up the 
other end of his ear-tube and draw him into congenial 
talk or discussion. One who by this time cannot 



BIOGRAPHY. 305 

hear general conversation, and must endure as a 
patient looker-on long scenes which under his natural 
and earlier conditions he would have been quickest 
to appreciate, is certainly at a social disadvantage. 
But when given his cue, Schouler is found one of 
the most lively and interesting of conversers; he is 
amiable, sympathetic, and considerate of those about 
liim ; and most of all he has a mirthfulness which, 
once aroused, makes him the life of his company, and 
promotes good fellowship at once. Nicknames, mim- 
icry, droll and taking phrases, repartee, and a scintilla- 
tion of wit and delicate fancy which lights up all 
literature and all philosophy pour forth in his talk 
when he is thus in high spirits. Evanescent and 
hard as fireflies to catch, bat suiting admirably the 
occasion, impromptu generally and instantaneous, 
this flitting fun is of much the same sort that made 
his college papers so attractive; he gets humor out 
of sober subjects, and has a light way of poking fun 
at his heaviest tasks, wliich is one reason, no doubt, 
why he carries the burden of them so easily. 

While tarrying at Washington, when a bachelor, in 
the house of some personal friends, he would produce 
his watch and key about bedtime and say: "Now I 
will wind up my watch and then wind up the stairs." 
"Ah! the power of money," was the exclamation of 
one in a family group which discussed the threadbare 
theme of their poverty. "Yes," was his response, 
setting them all in better humor; "a stronghold in 
the day of trouble." When two young ladies, Martha 
and Bertha, both of whom he much liked, visited his 
wife at the mountains recently, he amused them on a 
morning ride by addressing various remarks to them 
collectively as "Rtha." In his office, as well as in 
the home circle, his spirits have found incessant play 

20 



306 BIOGRAPHY. 

in jests which have a touch of pleasant satire and 
exaggeration. When young at the bar, and perform- 
ing that function which all of the profession so well 
appreciate, he used to remark, " ' The lawyer shall 
have his fee,' saith my Lord Coke." "What!" 
asked a fellow-lawyer, jestingly, while he was deep in 
devising the prosecution of claims against the United 
States, "are you in favor of preventing the public 
debt from being paid off?" "Yes," was his not less 
jesting reply, "and in favor, too, of judiciously 
increasing it." One maternal client called m those 
busy years to receive her settlement, bringing an 
adult son with her; and the latter seemed quite 
desirous of carrying the government draft aAvay to 
get it cashed by the paymaster, contraiy to the office 
rule, which protected the attorney's lien on the fund 
for recompense ; but, seeing a dubious expression on 
our young lawyer's face, he added, "I can leave 
mother here till I come back." "That is not quite 
the collateral which would suit the transaction," was 
his ready answer. Honest as the day in all profes- 
sional relations, and sometimes unreasonably moderate 
in his charges, Schouler has had many a sly lunge at 
his sober function of public administrator: "One 
touch of public administration," he is wont to say in 
a sort of mock rhapsody, "makes the whole world 
next of kin." And Avith reference to his dignified 
law treatises, he sometimes indulges in the light 
fancy of an illustrated edition, — dilating upon such 
fitting wood-cuts as the wife pledging her husband's 
credit for necessaries, or the judge granting habeas 
corpus for the custody of an infant. All these are 
fair specimens — neither the best nor the worst — of 
our author's light ebullitions in social company where 
he is intimate. There is nothing caustic in his wit, 



BIOGRAPHY. 307 

nor the slightest soil of coarseness or indecency. 
Like his father before him, he enjoys with the young 
and ingenuous the pretence of misunderstanding 
what was said ; but he rarely relates stories or anec- 
dotes at greater length than did ^soj). 

Music, too, is an inseparable element of our 
author's nature, whether in graver or gayer moods ; 
and in his piano he has found the constant companion 
and solace of enforced solitude. " My ear for music," 
he sometimes says lightly, " is the ear that I retained 
longest." With the classical school which Beethoven 
brought to perfection, and Mendelssohn delicately 
fenced in, he is amply familiar; but for obvious 
reasons the modern technique school and the latest 
modern masters he has not much cultivated. While 
he heard easily, all the popular street music of the 
day he readily caught up and memorized, so that 
each year moved on -with its own musical calendar; 
and such earlier music he can still reproduce on his 
mstrument by the hour together, — that, for instance, 
of his military service year, of which not a strain is 
forgotten. He wliistles much while at work in his 
study, or bursts out with some odd snatch of poetry 
set to original music. For several summers preced- 
ing his trip to Europe in 1889, he presided at the 
little organ of his summer church at North Conway, 
organizing and training most acceptably with his 
wife's aid a voluntary choir each j^ear. 

In the summer entertainments, too, at his mountain 
home, whether for charity or religion, he has long been 
prominent, as stage or business manager, improvising 
various performances when younger; and on one 
occasion he played admirably in private theatricals, 
and sustained a leading part through long dialogues 
by reading with his eye the motion of the other 



308 BIOGRAPHY. 

speaker's lips. There has been no gnarled or eccen- 
tric growth in him of habits or character, such as 
marked infirmity is apt to engender; but he carries 
along the affairs committed to him (which are many) 
with good sense and discretion. A temper self- 
reliant, and perhaps irritable and stern when opposed, 
is kept under Christian self-discipline ; and the whole 
tenor of his life has been to harmonize and unite, 
while in affection he is generous and sincere to 
tenderness. 

Professor Schouler is now fifty-seven years old; 
and to all outward appearance in the full prime of 
mental and physical vigor. Though hair and mus- 
tache are iron-gray, his complexion has the ruddiness 
of health and temperance ; his voice is clear, his eye 
penetrating, and the strong lines of his face disclose 
no wrinkle. His spirits are elastic, and brain-work 
goes on steadily in his literary work-shop without 
brain-worry. He has a comfortable independence to 
retire at any time upon ; for his mother's only brother, 
William Wilkins Warren, of Boston, a sagacious and 
public-spirited citizen, to whom our author became 
most deeply attached after the death of his own 
parents, died in 1890, leaving the bulk of a consider- 
able fortune to the children of General Schouler, 
together with another niece and nephew. But James 
Schouler has learned to prefer work to idleness, and 
simple living to luxury. He continues at the maxi- 
mum of his University lecture-work; accepting an 
occasional public invitation besides, as when he 
addressed the students of Yale University a few 
weeks ago. While he considers himself as already 
retired from legal jiractice, he has been so constantly 
employed in the care and settlement of probate 



BIOGRAPHY. 309 

estates, that the family and other trusts committed 
to liis personal charge at the present time might be 
thought enough by many a young lawyer or banker 
to give him employment. 

As for his literary plans, he considers that he has 
brought them fairly to a finish, and in the new edi- 
tions of his various works he seeks chiefly to perfect 
what he has already wrought out. Constitutional 
studies, State and Federal, the substance of courses 
which he has lately given at the Johns Hopkins 
University, may possibly be worked soon into a 
students' manual. His publishers and personal friends 
urge him, moreover, to prepare and issue a sixth and 
concluding volume of his United States history, so as 
to cover the period (1861-65) of the Civil War. His 
vast studies, together with his personal recollections 
of that bloody strife, should qualify him in a marked 
degree for such an addition to liis grand narrative; 
but other Aviiters have hastened to occupy this field 
before him, and personally he feels reluctant to stir 
on his OAvn part those sectional animosities which 
historical candor is sure to provoke. Nevertheless, 
the critical study of that great rebellion still occupies 
him ; and health and opportunity must largely deter- 
mine hereafter whether the results of liis investigation 
will ever reach that reading public of whose forbear- 
ing sympathy he feels that he has taken the fullest 
advantage. 

Our author received in 1891 the honorarj^ degree 
of LL.D. from the National University of Washing- 
ton; conferred, under the rules of that institution of 
professional schools, solely for distinguished ser\dces 
in the field of jurisprudence. Some leading univer- 
sity of ampler scope might well make similar recog- 
nition of our author's historical services; and indeed, 



310 BIOGRAPHY. ^y^/'-^f 

as he has been assured, if the Johns Hopkins con- 
ferred honorary degrees at all, he would there, at 
least, before this date have found such approbation. 
The Boston University, which also confers no hono- 
rary degrees, promoted him in 1894 to full Professor i 
in the Law School. He is at present first Vice- I 
President of the American Historical Association, an 
institution in whose progressive influence he has con- ' 
stantly taken an active interest ; he is also a member i 
of the New England Historic-Genealogical Societ}', « 
and of the Virginia Historical Association. He 
belongs to the Massachusetts Commandery of the 
Loyal Legion, and to various social clubs, besides, in 
Boston, Baltimore, and Washington. Abstemious, 
as always, cheerful, and a steady student and worker 
with pen or voice, his productive work appears by no 
means ended. But he has had his warning. He is 
now very nearly at the limit of life attained by either 
of his parents. The physicians, moreover, have pro- 
nounced that a pulse, strangely irregular, betokens 
weak functions of the heart. He may live, they tell 
him, f 0?^ many years longer, carrying his present 
weight of congenial toil or even increasing it ; but a 
great over-pressure of work and mental anxiety, or 
some disease taking strong hold of the physical 
frame, might carry him off suddenl}-. To tliis his 
response has been, that a sudden death, if painless, is 
that which he would prefer to any other; and that 
gladly as he welcomes the reasonable prospect of a 
final stage of rest without rust, he has no desire to 
live a single day after life has become a positive 
burden to himself and others. 



